Principal Geoscience Data Scientist

Job Description

We seek a principal geoscience data scientist to join our expanding geoscience team in the UK. You will work with the very best of rock core scan datasets collected for a wide range of applications in the Earth sciences. You will join a welcoming, open, ambitious and inquisitive team of geoscientists. You will lead the development of next generation data science approaches for the analysis of rock core and cuttings scan datasets, encompassing 1D, 2D, and 3D imaging techniques, acquired using our world-leading scanning technology. We seek a candidate who has depth and breadth of expertise, and vision. We believe core scanning technology has a bright future and we are excited in the ways in which machine learning can be integrated into our services. We seek a candidate who shares this vision. You will ensure that we adopt the very best of modern data science and machine learning approaches. As part of your responsibilities, you will introduce, develop and adopt deep learning models for the analysis and interpretation of core and cuttings datasets. The successful candidate will have practical experience of semantic and instance segmentation of geological images. You will work closely with our Research and Development and Software teams. We seek a candidate with significant experience in geoscience combined with mathematics, data science, computer science, and/or machine learning. We seek a candidate who is open-minded to approaches beyond traditional geological workflows and who will raise our profile in the data science community.

About Geotek

Geotek, established in 1994, is a global leader in non-destructive instrumentation and analysis of geological core and cuttings samples, with a strong international presence. We have a robust order book with clients in the oil and gas, mineral exploration, engineering and research sectors. We employ a wide range of analytical techniques including p- and s-wave velocity, natural gamma ray, hyperspectral imaging, computed tomography (CT), X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). We maintain, develop and deploy a code base including several machine learning models, which we leverage in our consultancy services.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Excellent knowledge of the common and important acquisition techniques used in core scanning, including hyperspectral imaging and XRF.
• Design, build, test and support state-of-the-art data science solutions to geoscience problems, with an emphasis on the development and optimisation of machine learning for segmentation of images and analysis of high dimensionality datasets.
• Ensure we are up to date with respect to the latest open source trends, capabilities and models, including the application of vision transformer models.
• Collaborate with our research and development and software teams.
• Mentorship of junior members of the team.
• Prioritize quality and accuracy of model outputs through validation, including implementation of quality control measures.
• Remit of duties and responsibilities will be adapted based upon the experience and interests of the successful candidate.
• The role will be based in the UK, with some opportunity to travel in the UK and overseas.

Qualifications and Experience Requirements

• Proficient in Python
• Willingness to learn and mentor
• Effective communication skills, and ability to work in a small team
• Undergraduate degree level qualifications in either computer science, data science, mathematics or related field, and should have experience of the geoscience domain.
• Postgraduate degree level qualification (e.g., PhD) is preferred but is not mandatory
• Advanced problem-solving and modelling skills, with focus on extracting geological meaning from multi-variate datasets
• A strong track record of applying classification and regression machine learning techniques
• A robust understanding of geoscience principles and geological processes
• Comfortable with working databases and big data
• Good interpersonal, presentation and organisational skills
• Ability to communicate complex geoscientific information effectively
• Ability to write efficient and scalable code. You know how to optimize your code to get the most from your machine
• Previous experience of working with core scan data is potentially advantageous but it is not mandatory
• Experience in cloud computing is potentially advantageous but it is not mandatory
• Fluent in written and spoken English
• Full and clean UK driving license

Salary and benefits are negotiable and will be commensurate with skills and experience.