Principal Specialist Exploration & Project Development & Engineering Data Domain

About the Role

Ma’aden is seeking a Principal Specialist, Exploration & Project Development & Engineering Data Domain. This full-time role involves shaping the strategic management, governance, and value realization of Exploration and Petroleum Development & Evaluation (PDE) data assets across the organization. The position ensures that critical subsurface, geological, geophysical, drilling, reservoir, and related technical data are reliable, accessible, secure, and aligned with business priorities.

Role Purpose and Impact

The Principal Specialist creates business value by enabling data-driven decision-making, improving data quality and consistency, accelerating digital initiatives, and maximizing the return on data investments. Through strong domain stewardship and collaboration with business and technology stakeholders, the role strengthens operational performance, supports innovation, and enhances organizational data maturity. This position is key in establishing data domain capabilities that drive exploration success, improve resource evaluation outcomes, reduce information risk, and enable advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation initiatives across the enterprise.

Key Responsibilities

• Shape and execute the Exploration & PDE data domain strategy, aligning it with enterprise data and digital objectives.
• Establish a scalable data domain framework to improve data accessibility, usability, and business value.
• Drive prioritization of data initiatives that support exploration, evaluation, and resource development objectives.
• Strengthen governance practices to ensure data integrity, consistency, ownership, and regulatory compliance.
• Deliver measurable improvements in data quality through standards, controls, and stewardship processes.
• Govern critical data assets across their lifecycle to enhance reliability and reduce operational risk.
• Lead the development and enhancement of data products that enable operational and strategic decision-making.
• Increase adoption of trusted data assets across technical and business functions.
• Translate business requirements into scalable data solutions that generate measurable business outcomes.
• Provide expert guidance on exploration, geological, geophysical, drilling, reservoir, and subsurface data management practices.
• Influence enterprise data architecture decisions to improve interoperability and domain integration.
• Promote industry-leading practices, technologies, and methodologies across the data ecosystem.
• Build strong partnerships between business functions, digital teams, and external partners to align priorities and outcomes.
• Facilitate effective decision-making through clear data ownership, accountability, and governance structures.
• Strengthen collaboration across domains to improve enterprise-wide data consistency and effectiveness.
• Accelerate the adoption of advanced analytics, automation, AI, and digital capabilities through high-quality domain data.
• Identify opportunities to optimize processes, reduce manual effort, and improve data lifecycle efficiency.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and data-driven performance.

Qualifications and Experience

• A minimum of 10 years of relevant experience is required for this role.

Indicators of Success

• Improved data quality, consistency, and trust across Exploration and PDE data assets.
• Increased utilization of data products for operational and strategic decision-making.
• Enhanced compliance with data governance standards, policies, and regulatory requirements.
• Reduced data-related risk and improved data lifecycle management effectiveness.
• Faster delivery of digital, analytics, and AI initiatives enabled by trusted domain data.
• Strong stakeholder satisfaction and clear ownership of critical business data assets.