Chief Operating Officer

This is a unique leadership opportunity for a senior mining professional to play a key role in advancing a domestic rare earth element (REE) company focused on critical mineral development. The company is currently permitting its fully delineated flagship REE resource while validating proprietary separation technology at the demonstration-plant scale. The COO will leverage a strong technical foundation in permitting, mining, geology, or geoscience to lead a highly specialized team and help guide the organization toward commercial operations.

• Serve as the senior technical voice within the executive team, providing geological and scientific leadership that underpins the Company's resource narrative, investor story, and regulatory posture
• Translate geological knowledge into operational strategy: resource risk, mine planning assumptions, process feed characterization, and permitting technical submissions
• Direct all field operations including exploration drilling, resource definition programs, and core logging — ensuring data quality, geological integrity, and NI 43-101 / SK 1300 compliance
• Establish and maintain operating systems, KPIs, and accountability structures across all active work streams
• Build and lead a high-performing, multi-disciplinary team; recruit key technical and operational talent as the Company scales toward production

• Own the Company's permitting strategy and regulatory relationships across federal and state agencies (e.g., USDA/USFS, EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, NRC/Wyoming DEQ, as well as other state Federal and state regulatory bodies)
• Leverage deep technical understanding of the resource to strengthen the quality and defensibility of permitting submissions — baseline studies, geochemical characterization, mine closure plans, and environmental and radiological impact assessments
• Manage external consultants and government and community relations advisors with precision and accountability in support of permitting and regulatory processes
• Identify and mitigate regulatory risk proactively; maintain permitting timelines that align with the Company's capital and development plan

• Provide executive oversight of the proprietary REE separation technology program, ensuring demonstration-plant milestones are achieved on schedule and within budget
• Apply technical acumen to evaluate process design criteria, feed and waste stream characterization data, and scale-up assumptions
• Collaborate with the process engineering team to develop a commercially validated flowsheet and support the transition from demonstration to commercial-scale design
• Manage IP protection, vendor relationships, and strategic partnerships associated with the separation process

• Own the operational budget; develop detailed project cost models and forecasts in support of ongoing capital-raise activities
• Partner with the CEO and CFO to produce investor materials, Board reporting, and financial projections grounded in rigorous technical assumptions
• Drive capital allocation discipline across work streams, ensuring resources are deployed to the highest-value activities at each stage of development

• Serve as the primary technical authority in investor presentations, data rooms, and due-diligence processes — bridging the gap between geological reality and capital-market communication
• Represent the Company with government officials, regulatory bodies, indigenous and local communities, and strategic partners

• Participate actively in Board-level strategic discussions and governance from the outset
• Develop enterprise-wide fluency across commercial, financial, legal, and human capital functions to complement the company’s technical foundation

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Geology, Geoscience, Mining Engineering, Metallurgy, Chemical Engineering or a closely related earth science discipline
• 15+ years of progressive technical and leadership experience in the mining,…