Principal: Mining

Angloamericandebeersgroup; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 1,600,000 - 2,400,000; Full time

Job summary

De Beers Group's Mining portfolio requires a Technical Leader to consolidate three Principal Mining Engineer roles into one, guiding safe, sustainable, and value-maximising outcomes through integrated mine planning, governance, and operational support.

The role provides technical leadership across Open Pit and Underground operations, aligning Life of Asset plans with execution, improving safety, reliability, and asset value across multiple sites.

Qualifications

• Bachelor degree in mining engineering or equivalent is required.
• Mine Manager's Certificate of Competency is preferred where applicable.
• Postgraduate qualification (Honours/Master's/MBA or equivalent) is preferred.
• Professional registration with SAIMM, ECSA or equivalent is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership across De Beers' mining portfolio to ensure safe, sustainable, and value-maximising outcomes.
• Lead mine planning, technical governance, and operational support for Open Pit and Underground operations.
• Ensure alignment between life-of-asset plans, medium-term plans, and execution strategies.
• Identify and manage technical risks, constraints, and improvement opportunities across the asset portfolio.

Skills

Safety leadership

Risk management

Mining operations expertise

Leadership of multidisciplinary teams

Education

Degree in Mining Engineering

Mine Manager's Certificate of Competency

Postgraduate qualification (Honours/Master's degree, MBA or equivalent)

Professional registration (SAIMM, ECSA)

Job description

The Mining team's role within Technical & Sustainability at De Beers Group is to ensure that mines are designed, developed, and operated to deliver maximum value and allow De Beers Group to meet its strategic, operational and compliance requirements.

In collaboration with Processing and Engineering & Maintenance disciplines, Mining enables tangible value delivery across the business by improving stability, reducing variation, and removing constraints across operations.

This role reflects the consolidation of three previous Principal Mining Engineer roles into one, requiring agile, adaptable, and resilient leadership to contribute to the development and execution of De Beers Group's strategy.

The purpose of this role is to provide technical leadership across De Beers' mining portfolio, ensuring safe, sustainable, and value-maximising outcomes through effective mine planning, technical governance, operational support, assurance, and continuous improvement aligned to business strategy.

Technical Leadership & Mine Planning

• Serve as the Group technical authority for mining practices across Open Pit and Underground operations.
• Provide expert technical support to Managed Operations and Non-Managed Joint Venture Operations across mining, planning, productivity, operational performance, and value optimisation.
• Support development and optimisation of mine designs, mining methods, production strategies, and operating practices to maximise asset value delivery.
• Identify key technical issues, risks and opportunities for business risk mitigation and value add within core mining systems as a process expert.
• Ensure alignment between Life of Asset Plans, medium-term plans, operational execution strategies, and technical discipline objectives.
• Lead cross-discipline integration inputs into business plans and operational execution through the upstream diamond value chain.

Continuous Improvement & People Development

• Facilitate continuous improvement and modernisation at operations aligned to defined priority areas based on monitoring and review of operational performance and reliability across De Beers Group.
• Drive optimisation of mining systems, equipment utilisation, operational performance, and technical standards across the consolidated portfolio.
• Drive people development within the mining discipline across Managed and Non-Managed Joint Ventures, including identifying knowledge gaps, coaching, identifying potential employees, and planning succession for critical roles

Governance, Assurance & Risk Management

• Develop, maintain and implement technical standards related to business level catastrophic risk.
• Conduct technical 2nd line assurance activities and support governance processes for managed entities.
• Review and challenge mine plans, production strategies, capital projects, operating costs, and technical assumptions.
• Identify and manage key technical, operational, and strategic risks, constraints, opportunities and improvement initiatives impacting asset performance and long-term value creation.
• Ensure compliance with applicable mining, safety, environmental, rehabilitation, and closure requirements.

Studies, Projects and Reporting

• Deliver techno-economic modelling of the integrated business plan and trade-off scenarios.
• Maintain the De Beers Supply Strategy, running scenarios and updating it with changes to the business.
• Lead study implementation for managed operations, including tactical transition plans.
• Support Resource and Reserve reporting; review production processes and conduct iterative optimisation of the LoM forecast to maximise the reserve-to-resource ratio and achieve optimum NPV+.

Qualifications and Experience

• Degree in Mining Engineering or equivalent.
• Preferred certification: Mine Manager's Certificate of Competency (where applicable).
• Preferred: Postgraduate qualification (Honours/Master's degree, MBA or equivalent) in Mining Engineering, Mine Planning or a related discipline.
• Preferred certification: Professional registration with SAIMM, ECSA (Pr Eng), or equivalent recognised professional body.
• Minimum 12-15 years' mining industry experience, including at least 5 years at Mining Manager or Technical Services Manager level (or equivalent), leading massive mining production environments (Hard Rock, UG and Open Pit) and managing contractor-driven mining operations (drilling, blasting, load & haul).
• Demonstrated experience integrating mine planning with operational execution, and driving safety, production and cost performance at scale across a consolidated, multi-site portfolio (reflecting the combination of three previous Principal Mining Engineer roles).
• Strong commercial understanding of mining operations and demonstrated leadership of multidisciplinary operational teams and contractor partners in complex mining environments.

Knowledge & Technical Skills

• Strong safety leadership and risk management capability, ensuring safe, compliant, and sustainable mining operations.
• Deep mining operational expertis