Drilling Exploration Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Job Summary:
Mariana Minerals is a software-first, vertically integrated minerals company focused on supplying critical minerals for modern energy and defense technologies. They are seeking a Drilling Engineer, Exploration & Resource Automation to develop and implement automated drilling and resource workflows, translating real-world processes into scalable software tools. The role involves collaboration with software teams and technical users to enhance drilling efficiency and data management.
Responsibilities:
• Work directly with the software team to design, test, and improve MarianaOS tools for drilling, exploration, sampling, QA/QC, assay review, and resource modeling.
• Translate field drilling workflows into product requirements, user stories, data models, automation logic, and practical software specifications.
• Help define how technical users should plan drill programs, capture field data, track sample movement, validate assays, and reconcile results inside MarianaOS.
• Build and refine workflows that reduce manual spreadsheet work, improve data quality, and make geological and drilling decisions faster and more auditable.
• Serve as the domain expert connecting geologists, drillers, resource modelers, field teams, and software engineers.
• Help develop automated systems for drill planning, target prioritization, hole design, drill schedule tracking, contractor coordination, and field progress reporting.
• Support workflows for greenfield exploration, brownfield drilling, infill drilling, resource conversion, confirmation drilling, and follow-up drilling.
• Design repeatable logic for comparing planned versus actual drilling outcomes, including drilled meters, productivity, sample recovery, deviations, delays, costs, and geological results.
• Identify opportunities to automate recurring decisions and checks across drilling campaigns, including sample interval validation, QA/QC flags, assay status tracking, and field issue escalation.
• Partner with technical and software teams to turn field learnings into product improvements that can scale across future Mariana Minerals projects.
• Help define and automate end-to-end sample workflows, including sample interval design, labeling, chain of custody, dispatch, lab status tracking, assay receipt, and QA/QC review.
• Develop requirements for automated QA/QC checks involving standards, blanks, duplicates, check assays, contamination risks, sample swaps, missing intervals, and out-of-sequence results.
• Review drilling and sampling processes in the field and convert those observations into better systems, forms, controls, dashboards, and alerts.
• Support automated comparison of drill results against geologic interpretations, resource assumptions, block model predictions, and mineralized domains.
• Help develop drillhole-to-block-model reconciliation workflows covering lithology, stratigraphy, mineralized intervals, grade, thickness, alteration, and spatial continuity.
• Define variance thresholds, validation logic, exception reports, and follow-up drilling recommendations.
• Use assay results, field observations, and model outputs to identify areas where the model is confirmed, contradicted, or needs geological true-up.
• Help create repeatable workflows that connect exploration drilling, resource estimation, mine planning, and project development decisions.
• Act as a bridge between field users and software developers, ensuring tools are technically sound, usable, and grounded in real exploration and drilling workflows.
• Test new MarianaOS features with real project data, identify edge cases, document gaps, and provide actionable feedback to the software team.
• Develop templates, process maps, standard operating procedures, dashboards, and training materials for drilling and sampling workflows.
• Communicate clearly with geology, resource modeling, operations, product team, engineering, and leadership teams.
• Support drilling, exploration, sampling, and resource definition workflows for the Copper One project, a sedimentary copper deposit in the Lisbon Valley district of southeast Utah.
• Spend time at site to understand actual field execution, contractor workflows, sample handling, geological controls, and operational constraints.
Qualifications:
Required:
• Bachelor's degree in Geological Engineering, Mining Engineering, Geology, Earth Sciences, or a related technical discipline.
• 3+ years of experience in drilling, exploration, mine geology, resource definition, resource modeling, and technical field programs.
• Strong understanding of drilling workflows, sample collection, assay data, QA/QC procedures, geological interpretation, and resource estimation concepts.
• Ability to work with drillhole data, sample intervals, assay results, geologic sections, block models, and field operating data.
• Experience with greenfield exploration, brownfield drilling, infill drilling, resource conversion, grade control, or development-stage drilling campaigns.
• Experience with geological block models, resource models, drillhole databases, 3D geological modeling workflows, and resource classification concepts.
• Experience with tools such as Leapfrog, Vulcan, Datamine, Deswik, Surpac, Micromine, acQuire, MX Deposit, GIS platforms, or similar systems.
• Experience defining QA/QC rules, assay validation processes, reconciliation reports, drilling dashboards, or data governance workflows.
• Strong interest in automation, process optimization, and building better systems for technical mining and exploration workflows.
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical geology/drilling teams and software/product teams.
• Comfort translating messy field workflows into clear requirements, process maps, rules, dashboards, checks, or software specifications.
• Willingness to be based within the vicinity of the Lisbon Valley / Monticello-Moab, Utah project area and spend meaningful time near the project.
Preferred:
• Experience with sediment-hosted copper, sandstone-hosted copper, red-bed copper, stratiform copper, or similar deposits is helpful, but not required.
• Experience creating products, internal tools, technical solutions, dashboards, workflows, or software-enabled processes is a meaningful asset.
Company:
Mariana Minerals is a software-first critical minerals company that supplies materials essential for modern energy. Founded in 2022, the company is headquartered in Houston, USA, with a team of 51-200 employees. The company is currently Growth Stage.