Location: Cambridge (UK) (Nine, Hills Rd, Cambridge CB2 1GE, United Kingdom)
Role: Structural Geologist - Critical Minerals Exploration
About Alt Carbon:
Alt Carbon is a translational Earth sciences company based out of IISc Bangalore, India, focused on building planetary subsurface intelligence. We've already built one of India's largest geochemistry and geology lab infra across Darjeeling and Bangalore to support our mission. After scaling to become the world's largest Enhanced Rock Weathering carbon removal company, we are leveraging our scientific, geospatial, and field infrastructure to tackle one of South Asia's biggest opportunities: the discovery & exploration of critical mineral resources, starting with Ni-Cu-PGE and lithium deposits. Backed by Lachy Groom (Physical Intelligence), Akshay Kothari (Notion), and Shastra VC, Alt Carbon has raised $15 million across its pre-seed and seed rounds.
About the role
We are building an integrated earth science team to locate the next generation of critical mineral deposits, spanning magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulfide to pegmatite-hosted Li systems. By nature, ore-forming processes are fundamentally tectonic and structurally controlled that involve, for example, conduit geometry, sulfide-trap architecture in mafic-ultramafic systems or melt extraction and fluid pathways and late-stage fractionation loci in granite-pegmatite systems. This role is responsible for building and validating the structural framework that makes sense of where, at regional and local scale, these processes were able to concentrate metals.
You will work closely with petrologists/petrogenetic modellers, computational geophysicists and machine learning engineers building prospectivity models, translating structural interpretation into a form that can be integrated with geochemical fertility criteria and geophysical targeting.
The role is desktop-based in its initial phase - interpreting legacy structural data, remote sensing and petrological/geophysical model outputs to build regional-to-local structural frameworks. Field campaigns are expected in later project stages as targets are prioritized, so hands-on field structural experience is essential even though the role does not begin in the field.
What you’ll work on
- Regional-to-local scale structural interpretation (fault/shear zone architecture, fold geometry, structural corridors, reactivation history) across areas of interest, using legacy structural datasets, remote sensing and existing field/drill core records (initial phase); contributing to design and leading field mapping campaigns in later phases.
- Identifying and characterizing structural controls on melt/fluid/sulfide transport and trapping from existing knowledge or model outputs.
- Working with petrologists to link structural setting to petrogenetic model - for instance, identifying where structural permeability would have allowed extraction of late-stage, highly fractionated melt pulses, or where syn-magmatic structures would channel sulfide liquid into economically viable traps.
- Working with computational geophysicists to ground-truth and refine structural interpretations derived from potential-field and EM data, and to help design structural constraints for 3D geological/geophysical models.
- Collaborating with ML engineers to structure, digitize, and encode structural datasets (orientation data, fault networks, kinematic indicators) into forms usable for data-driven prospectivity modelling, and sanity-checking model outputs against structural geological reasoning.
- Contributing structural criteria to fertility/prospectivity frameworks alongside geochemical and geophysical indicators, and helping prioritize target areas accordingly.
- Field-based structural mapping and data collection campaigns in later project stages, including logging structural data from drill core and making detailed structural maps.
Required qualifications
- Post-graduate degree (MSc/PhD) in Structural Geology, Tectonics, or a closely related field, preferably with a focus on mineral deposit settings.
- Demonstrated field-based structural mapping experience (this is essential background even though the role begins as desktop-based), with the ability to interpret structural data across multiple scales (regional architecture down to deposit-scale controls).
- Solid understanding of structural controls on magmatic and hydrothermal mineral systems (e.g., conduit/trap geometry in magmatic sulfide systems, fracture/lineament controls on melt or fluid extraction in evolved magmatic systems).
- Experience working with structural data in a digital/GIS environment (orientation data, fault/shear zone databases, cross-section and 3D structural modelling)
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate across disciplines - comfortable translating structural observations into a form that petrologists and geophysicists can build on, and vice versa.
- Willingness to transition into field-based work, including remote or logistically demanding terrain, as the project moves on.
Preferred qualifications
- Prior experience with magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulfide systems, layered mafic-ultramafic intrusions, intrusion-driven rare metal granite systems (Sn-W-Li-Ta).
- Experience with 3D structural modelling software and interpreting structural data alongside gravity/magnetic/EM datasets.
- Familiarity with structural data digitization and database design well enough to work productively with ML engineers on model-ready structural datasets.
- Experience with core logging and structural analysis of drill data.
- Publication record or applied project experience linking structural architecture to mineral deposit formation or targeting.
What success looks like
You are someone who can look at a regional structural map or an outcrop shear zone and immediately ask what it means for melt or metal transport and who can sit with a petrologist’s process model or geophysicist’s inversion result and identify the structural piece that is missing or inconsistent. You are equally comfortable in the field, in a GIS/3D modelling environment, and in a room with ML engineers figuring out how to encode what you know into something a model can use.
Pay: £40,000.00-£60,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Casual dress
- Company pension
- On-site parking
- Private dental insurance
- Private medical insurance
Work Location: In person
