Principal Specialist Innovation Translation📣 Job Ad

About Ma'aden and the Opportunity

Ma'aden - Saudi Arabian Mining Company, established in 1997, is a leading multi-commodity mining and metals company in the Middle East. Based in Riyadh, Ma'aden is instrumental in developing the mining industry to become a key pillar of Saudi Arabia’s economy by building an integrated mining value chain. This full-time role offers an opportunity to contribute to the company's growth and shape the future of mining in the Kingdom.

The Role: Principal Specialist, Innovation Translation

The Principal Specialist, Innovation Translation, bridges the gap between scientific discovery and industrial deployment. This position is responsible for transforming high-potential technologies into scalable, investment-ready business solutions. The role ensures innovation opportunities are technically proven, economically viable, and operationally integrated before significant capital is committed to industrial implementation. It accelerates value creation by reducing technical uncertainty, validating performance, and establishing credible scale-up pathways that support confident investment decisions.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish scalable pathways to convert scientific concepts into industrially deployable solutions, including robust design bases, operating parameters, performance criteria, and scale-up frameworks.
• Develop and maintain integrated techno-economic models that quantify value, risk, and investment attractiveness, strengthening investment decisions with clear assessments of economic viability and critical value drivers.
• Implement structured maturity assessment frameworks to guide progression from pilot validation to industrial deployment, reducing technical and commercial uncertainty through disciplined experimentation and readiness reviews.
• Define technology integration requirements across process, operational, infrastructure, maintenance, and control environments, ensuring technologies are prepared for successful industrial adoption.

Technology Integration and Governance

This role involves rigorous techno-economic assessment and maturity governance to strengthen Ma’aden's ability to commercialize emerging technologies while minimizing delivery, operational, and investment risks. Specific duties include:

• Accelerating technology maturation while minimizing unnecessary cost, time, and development risk.
• Enabling evidence-based prioritization through continuous refinement of business cases and value realization forecasts.
• Providing objective recommendations on the progression, redesign, partnership, acceleration, or termination of innovation opportunities.
• Safeguarding validated technology intent throughout engineering, commissioning, and first-of-a-kind (FOAK) deployment activities.

Strategic Leadership and Partnerships

The Principal Specialist will provide expert technical leadership and foster external collaborations to drive innovation. This includes:

• Strengthening decision quality across innovation programs and technology investments by challenging assumptions and applying rigorous scientific and engineering evaluation.
• Embedding fact-based decision-making, technical discipline, and continuous learning across the innovation portfolio.
• Building high-value partnerships with technology providers, research institutions, OEMs, and specialist organizations to accelerate technology development.
• Capturing and transferring scale-up knowledge, lessons learned, and best practices across innovation initiatives.

Candidate Requirements

We are seeking a professional with a strong background in innovation translation and industrial deployment. The ideal candidate will possess:

• A minimum of 10 years of relevant experience in transforming scientific discoveries into industrial solutions.
• Demonstrated ability to establish scalable pathways and robust design bases for technology maturation.
• Proven expertise in techno-economic modeling, risk assessment, and investment decision support.
• Experience in managing technology maturity governance and ensuring successful industrial integration and first-of-a-kind (FOAK) deployments.
• A track record of providing strategic technical leadership and fostering collaborative partnerships within technology ecosystems.