Biostratigrapher
Raise is currently hiring a contract team member on behalf of our client. They’re expanding their team to meet growing needs, making this a unique opportunity to work with an industry leader.
Responsibilities
- Provides specialist stratigraphic expertise to oil and gas exploration, appraisal, development, and drilling teams. Using micropaleontology, palynology, calcareous nannofossils, or related fossil disciplines, the role establishes geological age, correlation, depositional environment, and stratigraphic frameworks that reduce subsurface uncertainty and support business and operational decisions.
- The successful candidate will analyze fossil assemblages from cuttings, core, sidewall core, and outcrop samples; identify bioevents, unconformities, condensed sections, reworking, cavings, and preservation limitations; and develop defensible age and paleoenvironmental interpretations. Results will be integrated with well logs, sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy, seismic interpretation, geochemistry, and regional basin frameworks. Typical applications include well correlation, reservoir zonation, prospect evaluation, static-model construction, and pre-drill or real-time well support.
- The role will design fit-for-purpose sampling and analytical programs, prepare pre-drill stratigraphic prognoses, and provide operational guidance on formation identification, coring and casing points, section total depth, and stratigraphic position ahead of the bit. The individual will also assure the technical quality of internal and contractor-generated work, manage external laboratory studies, maintain auditable datasets and reference collections, and clearly communicate interpretation confidence, alternative hypotheses, and business implications.
Skills and Qualifications
- Master’s degree or PhD in geology, paleontology, micropaleontology, palynology, stratigraphy, or a related discipline.
- 10 + years of relevant oil and gas industry experience, including exploration, development, and/or well operations.
- Advanced taxonomic expertise in at least one major fossil discipline, with working knowledge of other biostratigraphic methods preferred.
- Strong understanding of biostratigraphy, chronostratigraphy, sequence stratigraphy, sedimentology, depositional environments, and basin evolution.
- Demonstrated ability to integrate fossil data with well logs, core, seismic, geochemical, and other subsurface datasets.
- Experience delivering single-well, multi-well, field-scale, or regional stratigraphic studies.
- Strong technical judgment, uncertainty assessment, report writing, project management, and multidisciplinary communication skills.
- Ability to mentor junior staff, provide technical assurance, and influence decisions without formal authority.
Preferred Knowledge and Experience
- Expertise in multiple fossil disciplines or extensive knowledge of a strategically important petroleum basin.
- Operational or wellsite biostratigraphy experience, including time-critical drilling support.
- Experience with deepwater clastic, carbonate, pre-salt, unconventional, or structurally complex settings.
- Integration of biostratigraphy with seismic stratigraphy, chemostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, geochronology, or reservoir modeling.
- Experience developing regional biozonations, managing laboratory contractors, and harmonizing legacy datasets.
- Familiarity with geological databases, visualization tools, scripting, statistical analysis, automated microscopy, or image-based fossil identification.
- Demonstrated technical leadership through mentoring, publications, conference presentations, or recognized subject-matter-expert status.
Looking for meaningful work? We can help
Raise is an established hiring firm with over 65 years of experience. We believe strongly in making the world a better place through work, which is why we’re a certified B Corporation and donate 10% of our profits to charity.
We strive to build teams that reflect the diversity of the communities we work in. We encourage all qualified applicants to apply, including people from traditionally underrepresented groups such as women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, people identifying as LGBTQ2SI, veterans, and people with visible/nonvisible disabilities.
We have a dedicated webpage for accommodations where you can learn more about what we offer, and request accommodation: https://raise.jobs/accommodations/
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