Senior Metallurgist - Gold Processing

About the role

The Senior Metallurgist provides technical leadership and metallurgical support to plant operations by monitoring and analyzing plant performance, leading process optimization and metallurgical test work, troubleshooting process issues and ensuring sound metallurgical accounting and data management. The role drives improvements in gold recovery, throughput, process stability and operating efficiency, while giving technical guidance and development to junior metallurgical staff.

Key responsibilities

• Lead metallurgical monitoring, plant surveys, sampling campaigns and technical evaluations across the gold processing circuit, and monitor key performance indicators such as throughput, gold recovery, grind size, reagent consumption, residence time, carbon performance and gold losses.
• Lead troubleshooting and root cause analysis of metallurgical and process issues, and design, coordinate and evaluate metallurgical test work and plant trials.
• Provide technical guidance to Operations on process control, operating parameters, ore variability and optimization of key processing areas.
• Lead daily, weekly and monthly metallurgical accounting, including mass balancing, gold reconciliation, production reporting and inventory management, and investigate variances and unexplained gold losses.
• Maintain and improve metallurgical accounting systems, databases, dashboards and reporting tools, and validate data and laboratory results against QA/QC requirements.
• Analyze test work and process data to identify trends, variances and optimization opportunities, and prepare daily, weekly and monthly reports and presentations.
• Develop annual operating and capital budgets for the Process department, prepare quarterly forecasts, track cost variances and optimize cost drivers such as reagents, grinding media, power, consumables and laboratory costs.
• Provide metallurgical input into production forecasting, budgeting and business planning, and promote safe work practices and risk assessment for test work, sampling and plant trials.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Metallurgy, Chemical Engineering, Mineral Processing or a related field.
• Sound technical knowledge of gold processing, including crushing, grinding, cyanidation, CIL and elution.
• Understanding of metallurgical accounting, sampling, mass balancing, gold inventory measurement and production reconciliation.
• Ability to communicate in English and French.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, good communication and reporting skills, and ability to work in a team in a fast-paced environment.

Required skills

• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel.
• Familiarity with data analysis tools such as PI and Centric is an advantage.