Chief Assayer

Responsibilities include: Leading the day-to-day operation and technical management of the mine-site or central assay laboratory. Establishing, implementing, and maintaining analytical methods and standard operating procedures for ore, concentrate, drill-core, exploration, process, and environmental samples. Overseeing fire assay, wet chemistry, instrumental analysis, and other appropriate analytical techniques for precious metals, base metals, and other economically significant elements. Ensuring accurate and timely assay results for grade control, exploration, resource definition, metallurgical testing, and production. Developing and maintaining quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) programs, including certified reference materials, blanks, duplicates, check assays, control charts, and proficiency testing. Investigating analytical discrepancies, anomalous results, outliers, and quality-control failures and implementing appropriate corrective actions. Establishing appropriate sample preparation, crushing, pulverizing, splitting, weighing, digestion, fusion, cupellation, and analytical procedures. Reviewing and approving assay results before their release to geology, metallurgy, mine operations, or management. Maintaining laboratory records, analytical documentation, certificates, calibration records, and chain-of-custody procedures. Ensuring laboratory equipment is properly operated, calibrated, maintained, and fit for purpose. Managing laboratory supplies, reagents, consumables, equipment requirements, and operating budgets. Recruiting, training, supervising, and evaluating assayers, laboratory technicians, and other laboratory personnel. Promoting a strong culture of safety, quality, accuracy, integrity, and continuous improvement. Ensuring laboratory personnel follow applicable health, safety, environmental, hazardous-material, and waste-management requirements. Coordinating external check assays, referee laboratories, and inter-laboratory comparisons when required. Working closely with Exploration and Resource Geology teams to ensure assay methods and detection limits are appropriate for exploration and resource-development programs. Collaborating with Mine Geology and Grade Control teams to provide timely analytical information for ore/waste classification and production decisions. Supporting Metallurgy and Processing teams with metallurgical, plant, concentrate, tailings, and recovery-related analyses. Assisting with laboratory audits, accreditation activities, regulatory inspections, and customer or third-party reviews. Identifying opportunities to improve laboratory throughput, analytical accuracy, turnaround times, automation, and cost efficiency. Preparing laboratory performance reports, QA/QC summaries, production statistics, and other management reports. Maintaining confidentiality and integrity of analytical data and ensuring results are reported accurately and objectively. Performing other technical and operational duties as required by site or corporate management. Education and experience required: Bachelor's degree in Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Metallurgy, Mineral Processing, Geochemistry, or a closely related scientific discipline. Advanced degree in Chemistry, Metallurgy, Geochemistry, or a related field is preferred. Professional registration, certification, or equivalent recognized professional standing is preferred where applicable.8–12+ years of progressive experience in mineral assay or analytical laboratory operations, preferably within the mining or mineral processing industry. Demonstrated experience in a senior supervisory, laboratory management, or Chief Assayer/Assay Manager capacity. Strong practical experience with fire assay techniques, including gold and silver determination. Experience with analytical methods for base metals and other commodities relevant to the operation. Demonstrated knowledge of sample preparation, digestion, fusion, cupellation, gravimetric methods, and instrumental analytical techniques. Experience developing and managing laboratory QA/QC programs and interpreting quality-control data. Experience with laboratory information management systems (LIMS), analytical databases, and electronic reporting systems. Experience managing laboratory personnel, budgets, equipment, vendors, and operational priorities. Experience working directly with mine geology, exploration, metallurgy, processing, and production teams. Experience implementing or maintaining laboratory quality systems and preparing for internal or external audits. Experience in a mine-site environment is strongly preferred.

Equal Employment Opportunity: The Company is an equal employment opportunity employer committed to providing employment opportunities to employees and applicants in accordance with all applicable laws.