Principal Process Engineer

Lycopodium is seeking a suitably qualified and experienced Principal Process Engineer to join our dynamic, growing team in Cape Town.

With offices in Australia, Africa, Canada, Peru and the Philippines, Lycopodium proudly delivers high quality professional engineering and project delivery services globally, across the resources, infrastructure and industrial processes sectors. By joining our global team and learning from renowned subject matter experts, we can offer you a diverse career that could take you anywhere in the world.

The tasks you'll perform

• Ensure that Process Engineering activities are conducted to the highest quality, ethical and in line with Company, Client and regulatory requirement.
• Establish design standards in areas of expertise for the process team.
• Coordinate the resources necessary to ensure that studies are completed on time, on budget and to the appropriate standard.
• Work collaboratively with personnel across all business units.
• Ensure overall process deliverables are achieved to a consistently high standard. Respond immediately to change to ensure projects are completed on time in accordance with the contractual scope of work and services.
• Utilise project reporting requirements in accordance with Company and Client standards to a high level of accuracy and professionalism.
• Responsible and accountable for all Process design functions carried out on designated Projects, whether handled personally or delegated to subordinate staff members.
• Deliver best practice process designs in accordance with project time, budget and technical requirements.
• Prepare and review study documents adhering to Company policies and procedures to a high level of accuracy and professionalism.
• Analyse data and its relationship to the process design.
• Manage the process components of scoping, pre-feasibility and feasibility studies to ensure they are correct and thorough, appropriate to the study phase.
• Carry out peer reviews of particular designs.
• Actively solicit new business and assist with established client maintenance.
• Suggest methods to improve operational efficiency within the Process Engineering team.
• Work in conjunction with a range of internal and external stakeholders to meet project design work criteria and deliverables.
• Develop and contribute to the delivery of improvement initiatives which support business priorities for continuous improvement.
• Contribute to engineers in training professional development by providing consistent mentoring and identify avenues of development.
• Proactively support other team members as required to ensure Project deliverables are met.
• Ensure a high level of communication is attained within the Process Engineering group.
• Provide leadership, guidance and direction to the Process Engineering group as required.
• Travel on an ad-hoc basis to suit the needs of the business and its operations.

The expertise you'll bring:

• University degree in Metallurgy, Chemical Engineering or equivalent qualification.
• A minimum of 15+ years of experience in mineral processing and/or related industries and post graduate experience.
• Mix of process plant operations and project development roles, within mining companies, and contract engineering organisations.
• South African Citizen or Permanent Resident
• Cape Town based (or willing to relocate)

Commodity:

• Gold and silver – free milling and refractory ores.
• Platinum group metals and chrome.
• Uranium
• Base metals (copper/lead/zinc/nickel/cobalt) – sulphides in particular, and oxides.
• Battery minerals (graphite/lithium).
• Iron ore (haematite/magnetite).
• Mineral sands (ilmenite/rutile/zircon/monatize).
• Industrial minerals (limestone/barite/talc/gypsum/potash/phosphates/etc).

Unit Process Focus:

• Comminution – crushing and screening, HPGR, milling (SAG, ball, rod, attrition) and classification.
• Ore preconcentration – DMS, machine sorting.
• Gravity separation – spirals, centrifugal bowl, tables, jigs.
• Froth flotation – including alternative equipment technologies – Jamieson, Woodgrove, Concorde, etc.
• Electrostatic separation.
• Magnetic separation
• Dewatering – thickening, filtration, centrifuging.
• Hydrometallurgical operations – leaching, carbon adsorption/desorption, solvent…