Senior Hydrogeologist

About the Company

The mining industry has steadily become worse at finding new ore deposits, requiring >10X more capital to make discoveries compared to 30 years ago. The easy-to-find, near-surface deposits have largely been found, and the industry has chronically under-invested in new exploration technology, relying on the manual techniques of yesteryear – even as demand accelerates for copper, lithium, and other metals to build electric vehicles, renewable energy, and data centers.

KoBold builds AI models for mineral exploration and deploys those models—alongside our novel sensors—to guide decisions on KoBold-owned-and-operated exploration programs. Since our founding in 2018, KoBold has become by far both the largest independent mineral exploration company and the largest exploration technology developer. Our data scientists and software engineers, who come from leading technology companies, jointly lead exploration programs with our renowned exploration geologists.

KoBold has proven its first discovery with materially less capital than the industry average and found one of the best copper deposits ever discovered: the copper is far more concentrated than the global average of copper mines, and this asset alone is expected to generate meaningful revenue for decades. KoBold has a portfolio of more than 60 other projects, each of which has the potential for another high-quality discovery.

KoBold is privately held; investors include institutional asset managers T. Rowe Price and Canada Pension Plan Investments; technology venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BOND Capital, Durable Capital, StepStone, and Standard Investments; and natural resources companies Equinor, BHP, and Mitsubishi.

About the Role

KoBold is advancing multiple exploration programs across Zambia, including our flagship Mingomba copper discovery. As Senior Hydrogeologist, you will lead all hydrogeological aspects of our exploration and early-stage development activities. You will design groundwater monitoring programs, develop conceptual and numerical hydrogeological models, manage water balance assessments, and ensure compliance with Zambian water regulations (WARMA). You will work closely with the drilling, environmental, and community relations teams to ensure water resources are responsibly managed across all project sites.

As projects advance toward feasibility, you will provide hydrogeological inputs for mine water management planning, dewatering strategies, and environmental impact assessments. You will also support community engagement on water-related matters and serve as the technical authority on groundwater issues for internal and external stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Identify data gaps in the hydrogeology program
• Coordinate and lead field teams to execute these data collection programs
• Provide technical and administrative support to hydrogeologic field operations in support of mine area surface and groundwater management strategies, including piezometric completions, drill stem injection test, other monitoring and characterization tests
• Coordinate and support of numerical and conceptual groundwater modeling: review/validation of results as well as contribution technical insights to derive novel hydrogeologic analyses
• Preparation of detailed technical scopes and execution of work, including dewater and production wells drilling and completion of dewatering wells as well as water exploration drilling and testing projects
• Provide technical support in the design and development of groundwater management strategies for mine planning and development
• Assess the impact of local (mine sale) as well as regional (basin scale) hydrogeologic conditions in ming operations and provide alternatives and detailed technical advice for mine water management.
• Actively communicate with other regional operators regarding mine water management at a regional scale and build collaborative management strategies and programs
• Collaborate with Project teams as the hydrogeology domain expert on engineering design to actualize a dewatering strategy

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or post-graduate degree in hydrogeology, geology, geological or environmental engineering, or closely related discipline
• 6-10 years of work experience in hydrogeology
• Experience in designing and implementing hydrogeologic field studies
• Experience in analyzing hydrogeologic data to support the development of conceptual and numerical models of groundwater flow, including familiarity with modeling software such as MODFLOW or FEFLOW
• Deep expertise in porous media flow and coupled groundwater/ surface- water systems.
• Knowledge of groundwater management strategies for
• Enthusiasm for developing novel mathematical models, both physics-based and data-driven
• Drive to self-teach programming fundamentals and learn KoBold’s code repositories

We are committed to equal employment opportunities for all people.

This position is a fixed term contract role.

At this time, we are only accepting applications from Zambian nationals.

Location: Copperbelt, Zambia.

What to Expect

Joining KoBold means getting the opportunity for hands-on exposure to our exploration projects around the world. All employees are expected to travel to project sites, with a minimum of one week per year. Field-facing and technical roles spend significantly more time in the field.