This is a unique leadership opportunity for a senior mining professional to play a key role in advancing a domestic rare earth element (REE) company focused on critical mineral development. The company is currently permitting its fully delineated flagship REE resource while validating proprietary separation technology at the demonstration-plant scale. The COO will leverage a strong technical foundation in permitting, mining, geology, or geoscience to lead a highly specialized team and help guide the organization toward commercial operations.
Overview
Responsibilities
Technical & Operational Leadership
- Serve as the senior technical voice within the executive team, providing geological and scientific leadership that underpins the Company's resource narrative, investor story, and regulatory posture
- Translate geological knowledge into operational strategy: resource risk, mine planning assumptions, process feed characterization, and permitting technical submissions
- Direct all field operations including exploration drilling, resource definition programs, and core logging — ensuring data quality, geological integrity, and NI 43-101 / SK 1300 compliance
- Establish and maintain operating systems, KPIs, and accountability structures across all active workstreams
- Build and lead a high-performing, multi-disciplinary team; recruit key technical and operational talent as the Company scales toward production
Permitting & Regulatory Strategy
- Own the Company's permitting strategy and regulatory relationships across federal and state agencies (e.g., USDA/USFS, EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, NRC/Wyoming DEQ, as well as other state Federal and state regulatory bodies)
- Leverage deep technical understanding of the resource to strengthen the quality and defensibility of permitting submissions — baseline studies, geochemical characterization, mine closure plans, and environmental and radiological impact assessments
- Manage external consultants and government and community relations advisors with precision and accountability in support of permitting and regulatory processes
- Identify and mitigate regulatory risk proactively; maintain permitting timelines that align with the Company's capital and development plan
Proprietary Separation Technology — Demonstration Plant Oversight
- Provide executive oversight of the proprietary REE separation technology program, ensuring demonstration-plant milestones are achieved on schedule and within budget
- Apply technical acumen to evaluate process design criteria, feed and waste stream characterization data, and scale-up assumptions
- Collaborate with the process engineering team to develop a commercially validated flowsheet and support the transition from demonstration to commercial-scale design
- Manage IP protection, vendor relationships, and strategic partnerships associated with the separation process
Capital Stewardship & Financial Partnership
- Own the operational budget; develop detailed project cost models and forecasts in support of ongoing capital-raise activities
- Partner with the CEO and CFO to produce investor materials, Board reporting, and financial projections grounded in rigorous technical assumptions
- Drive capital allocation discipline across workstreams, ensuring resources are deployed to the highest-value activities at each stage of development
Board, Investor & Stakeholder Engagement
- Serve as the primary technical authority in investor presentations, data rooms, and due-diligence processes — bridging the gap between geological reality and capital-market communication
- Represent the Company with government officials, regulatory bodies, indigenous and local communities, and strategic partners
General & Administrative
- Participate actively in Board-level strategic discussions and governance from the outset
- Develop enterprise-wide fluency across commercial, financial, legal, and human capital functions to complement the company’s technical foundation
Qualifications
Required
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Geology, Geoscience, Mining Engineering, Metallurgy, Chemical Engineering or a closely related earth science discipline
- 15+ years of progressive technical and leadership experience in the mining, permitting and processing disciplines
- Demonstrated expertise in resource definition, geological modeling, and drill program management — ideally with rare earth, critical mineral, or specialty metal projects
- Hands-on experience navigating mine permitting and licensing processes at the federal and state level, with working knowledge of NEPA, SMCRA, CWA, NRC, State Departments of Environmental Quality and/or equivalent frameworks
- A track record of leading multi-disciplinary teams and managing complex, multi-stakeholder programs
- Executive-level communication skills — the ability to translate technical substance into investor, regulator, and Board-level language with precision and confidence
Preferred
- Direct experience with REE mineralogy, metallurgy, processing and radiological controls — including familiarity with monazite, bastnäsite, xenotime, or ionic clay deposit types
- Prior P&L ownership or experience operating at the C-suite or VP level in a junior or pre-production mining company
- Exposure to demonstration-plant operations and process scale-up programs
- Advanced degree (M.Sc. or Ph.D.) in a geoscience or technical discipline; an MBA or executive leadership credential is complementary
- Existing relationships with federal and state permitting agencies relevant to Western U.S. mining projects
- Eligibility to qualify as a Qualified Person under NI 43-101 and SK 1300
Leadership Attributes
Beyond Credentials, The Successful Candidate Will Bring
- Geological authority with executive reach: the ability to command a room of investors and a room of drill geologists with equal effectiveness
- Builder's instinct: comfort and energy in environments where process, infrastructure, and culture must be created from the ground up
- Transparent character: the reputation among peers, regulators, and capital partners for dealing straight, even when the news is hard
- Strategic discipline: the capacity to hold the long-term development thesis steady while managing short-term operational complexity