Location: Cambridge (UK) (Nine, Hills Rd, Cambridge CB2 1GE, United Kingdom)
Experience: MSc/PhD in a quantitative earth science field, with prior research experience.
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 Team:
Shonku Labs is Alt Carbon's scientific research arm, named for Satyajit Ray's fictional Bengali inventor, who built impossible instruments in a small-town backyard and pointed them at the largest questions he could find. The spirit is the same: serious science, built from first principles, in places nobody expected it. Our critical minerals group brings petrologists, geochemists, structural geologists, geophysicists and computer scientists into one team with a single mandate — find the deposits the next century runs on, before anyone drills a hole.
Role Overview:
We are building an integrated earth science team to locate the next generation of critical mineral deposits, spanning magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulfide to granite-hosted Li-F systems. This role sits between petrogenetic/geochemical modelling and subsurface geophysical targeting — you will translate deposit-fertility hypotheses (mineralogical, geochemical and structural) into clean 3D, spatially continuous, data-informed prospectivity models that can eventually guide field programs and drill targeting.
You will collaborate directly with petrologists, geochemists, structural geologists and remote-sensing specialists. Your fundamental job is to answer one question: given this ore-forming process, what should it look like in the hidden subsurface, and how do we find it before anyone drills a hole?
Responsibilities:
1. Survey Design & Interpretation:
- Design and interpret (sometimes only interpret) multi-method geophysical surveys — gravity, magnetics, EM, IP/resistivity — linked to specific ore-genesis hypotheses and known processes, rather than to anomaly detection alone.
2. 3D Geological Modelling:
- Build 3D implicit geological models using existing computational tools, integrating drillhole, geochemical, structural and geophysical datasets into a single coherent volume.
3. Process → Physical Property Translation:
- Translate petrological and mineralogical fertility criteria (e.g. degree of magmatic fractionation, sulfide-conduit geometry, biotite-fluorine content) into expected physical property contrasts (e.g. density, susceptibility, conductivity, chargeability).
4. Prospectivity Mapping:
- Develop data-driven and ML-based prospectivity mapping (e.g. random forest, Bayesian networks, weights of evidence) that integrates geophysical layers with geochemical and spectral/remotely-sensed fertility indicators.
- Distinguish economic from non-economic geophysical responses — separating fertile granite pegmatites from barren fractionated phases, or economically viable conductive sulfide bodies from barren pyrrhotites.
5. Cross-Disciplinary Iteration:
- Work closely with petrologists, structural geologists and computer scientists to iterate survey design against evolving genetic models, rather than working from data alone.
What We're Looking For?
- Post-graduate degree (MSc/PhD) in Geophysics, Exploration Geophysics, or a closely related quantitative earth science field. Prior research experience.
- Demonstrated experience with potential-field methods (gravity, magnetics) and at least one of: electromagnetic methods, induced polarization/resistivity, or magnetotellurics.
- Practical experience with 3D geological/geophysical modelling and inversion software (e.g. Geosoft/Oasis Montaj, Leapfrog, GOCAD, ModEM, SimPEG, or equivalent).
- Working proficiency in Python or similar for data integration, inversion workflows, and applied machine learning relevant to the earth sciences.
- Comfort working with sparse, heterogeneous, multi-scale datasets — drillhole assays, regional and local surveys, whole-rock and mineral-scale geochemistry, spectral data.
- Ability to brainstorm around and translate mineralogical/petrological reasoning into physical-property expectations. This is a highly collaborative role that deals constantly in hypothesis testing.
Nice to Haves:
- Prior exploration experience with at least one of: magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulfide systems, layered mafic-ultramafic intrusions, or intrusion-driven rare metal granite systems (Sn-W-Li-Ta).
- Familiarity with hyperspectral or multispectral remote sensing as a complementary fertility-mapping tool.
- Experience co-designing survey programs directly with petrologists and geochemists.
- Understanding of sub-continental lithospheric mantle (SCLM) architecture and its implications for large-scale ore genesis.
- Publication record and applied project experience in mineral prospectivity modelling.
What Success Looks Like?
You are someone who can sit with a petrologist's process model — whether that's a melt fractionation pathway for a Li-F granite or a sulfide-conduit model for a Ni-Cu-PGE system — and ask the right next question: what would this look like in gravity, in EM, in magnetics, and how do we test it in 3D?
You are equally comfortable running an inversion and challenging the geological model that motivated it. You cross-collaborate with earth scientists and engineers to locate the next critical metal deposits with very high accuracy.
What We Offer:
- A high-ownership role in one of the most ambitious earth science teams being assembled anywhere, with the mandate and the runway to build a discovery programme from first principles.
- Genuine cross-disciplinary exposure: petrologists, geochemists, structural geologists, remote-sensing specialists and ML engineers in one room, arguing productively.
- The velocity of a startup with the scientific depth of a research lab — your models inform real survey design and real drill decisions, fast.
- A chance to publish, prototype, and ship science that goes from lab → field.
Why Join Us?
Most geophysical work today remains fragmented — outsourced surveys, poor QA/QC, disconnected datasets, and limited integration with chemistry or computation. Anomalies get chased; processes rarely do.
We think the next generation of discovery belongs to teams that can reason from ore-forming process to physical expression to drill target in one continuous chain, and then build the computational infrastructure to do it at scale.
The energy transition needs nickel, copper, PGEs and lithium at volumes the industry has not found yet. The problem is hard, the data is sparse, and the stakes are real.
If that sounds like the most interesting problem you could be working on, we should talk.
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
