Remote Global Head of IT
27 days ago
Lubbock
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. In the six years since founding, 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. KoBold’s IT function supports a globally distributed team of ~280 geoscientists, data scientists, and engineers working across North America, Zambia, the DRC, and field exploration sites around the world. As we scale, our IT needs are evolving rapidly—from reactive, break/fix helpdesk support toward proactive, automated IT operations that work seamlessly across geographies, including remote field sites with limited connectivity. In this role, you will own the full operational scope of Global IT. That means endpoint management, software procurement and renewals, identity and access administration, license optimization, vendor management, employee onboarding and offboarding, hardware lifecycle management, and IT training. You’ll lead a team of IT support staff, set technical direction, manage the annual software budget, and be the person who makes sure nothing falls through the cracks—renewals don’t expire, new hires have everything they need on day one, and the fleet is healthy and compliant. This is a player-coach role. You’ll spend meaningful time building and configuring systems yourself—writing Okta provisioning workflows, managing Jamf and Intune policies in Terraform, scripting automation for repetitive work—while also coaching and mentoring your direct reports, setting priorities, and raising the bar for what IT operations looks like at a fast-moving exploration technology company. Endpoint Management & Fleet Operations • Own the Global IT roadmap, setting technical direction for endpoint management, fleet automation, and IT operations across all KoBold offices and field sites in 10+ countries, • Design and implement zero-touch provisioning and automated reimaging workflows for macOS (Jamf) and Windows (Intune) endpoints, • Build endpoint monitoring, alerting, and fleet health dashboards to shift IT from reactive to proactive support, • Drive device lifecycle management including EoL/EoS tracking, hardware refresh planning, and inventory management across Jamf, Intune, CrowdStrike, and related tooling, • Create self-service application deployment and access workflows to reduce helpdesk volume and empower employees, • Apply DevOps principles to IT operations: configuration-as-code (e.g. managing Intune policies via Terraform), infrastructure automation, version-controlled policies, and repeatable processes, • Own internet reliability and network performance at all global remote KoBold sites Software Procurement, Licensing & Vendor Management • Manage the full software procurement lifecycle: new purchases, renewals, expansions, and cancellations, ensuring user access is never disrupted by lapsed licenses or last-minute renewals, • Own and drive execution of the annual software budget, including process improvements year-over-year and proactive renewal pipeline visibility for legal and finance, • Optimize license utilization across the SaaS portfolio—track usage, right-size seat counts, consolidate redundant tools, and negotiate pricing with vendors, • Coordinate with legal on contract review, working within the existing procurement process to move quickly on low-risk purchases while ensuring appropriate review for larger spend, • Onboard new SaaS applications with proper Okta integration (SSO, SCIM) before launch, and manage decommissioning of deprecated tools Identity, Access & Employee Lifecycle • Own Okta administration including SSO integrations, SCIM provisioning, group management, access request workflows, and lifecycle automation, • Manage Google Workspace administration, including license management, security settings, and break-glass super-admin governance, • Build automation for minimal-touch employee onboarding and offboarding—ensuring new hires are fully provisioned on day one and departing employees are cleanly deprovisioned, • Support AI tooling rollout (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and related tools) across the endpoint fleet, including deployment, configuration, and employee training Team Leadership & Training • Supervise and mentor IT support staff, providing technical coaching, priority-setting, performance management, and career development, • Develop and maintain IT training programs for new hires and ongoing employee enablement, including documentation, video walkthroughs, and live onboarding sessions, • Provide helpdesk backup on high-volume days, modeling the standard of responsiveness and quality you expect from the team Cross-Functional Collaboration • Learn about mineral exploration by working closely with exploration teams, including time in the field in remote operations, • Collaborate with infrastructure engineering and security teams on cross-cutting initiatives including observability, access controls, endpoint security posture, and incident response, • Partner across the company to contribute to specification, vendor selection, and change management on new software requests, • Partner with finance on budget tracking, invoice approvals, and AFE submissions for software spend, • Work with legal to streamline the contract review pipeline, maintain lead times on renewals, and advocate for tiered review processes that match risk to effort, • Coordinate digitization efforts across the globe, ensuring consistent standards and tooling for converting physical records to digital archives at field and office sites, • 5+ years of experience in IT engineering, IT management, or a similar role combining hands-on technical depth with operational ownership, • Strong experience with MDM platforms, particularly Jamf (macOS) and Microsoft Intune (Windows), including policy configuration, automated enrollment, compliance enforcement, and ideally infrastructure-as-code approaches (e.g. Terraform), • Experience with identity and access management platforms (Okta strongly preferred), including SSO integration, SCIM provisioning, access request workflows, and lifecycle automation, • Experience managing software procurement and renewals: specification and change management, vendor negotiation, license optimization, renewal pipeline management, and budget ownership, • Hands-on experience building zero-touch provisioning, automated reimaging, and self-service deployment workflows, • Experience with endpoint monitoring and fleet management at scale, including remote/distributed environments, • People management or technical lead experience: demonstrated ability to coach, mentor, and grow IT staff while maintaining high execution standards, • Strong scripting skills (Python, Bash, PowerShell, or similar) for building automation and tooling, • Intellectually curious; eager to learn about the substance of mineral exploration and exploration technology, • Excellent communication and collaboration skills—comfortable working across disciplines with engineers, scientists, legal, finance, and leadership in a remote-first environment, • Proven ability to take ownership: you build the roadmap, do the research, implement the solution, write the documentation, and communicate the rollout, • Strong prioritization instincts—you can look at a long list of IT initiatives and distinguish what actually matters from nice-to-haves, and you can explain why, • Comfort with ambiguity and a dynamic work environment; eagerness to take on an evolving range of responsibilities at a fast-growing company, • Experience supporting global teams across multiple time zones is a strong plus, • Familiarity with Google Workspace administration, CrowdStrike, Datadog, or similar tooling is a plus KoBold Metals is an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity for people of any race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, age, citizenship, disability, or veteran status. This position is full-time, exempt. The US base salary range for this full-time exempt position is $150,000 - $180,000 USD, plus equity and benefits including 401k matching. Location: KoBold is a remote-first workplace. We are open to candidates currently residing anywhere in the United States or Canada. CST or EST time zone preferred. All candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States or Canada.
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