Operations Technology Lead

Job Description

Job Description

Through its merger with Oil Search, Santos acquired and assumed operatorship over a world-class portfolio of oil leases on the Alaskan North Slope, USA.
Santos' focus in Alaska is the advancement of our Pikka Phase 1 project, which includes a single drill site, an oil processing facility, and other infrastructure to support production of 80,000 barrels of oil per day.
Pikka has been identified as being among the top quartile of oil and gas development projects for greenhouse gas emissions performance. Pikka is poised to play an important role in the energy transition and is aligned with our company goal of managing climate change risk. The project is on track to be ready for first oil in 2026.
The Pikka Unit is one of the largest conventional oil discoveries made in the United States in the last 30 years, and the Pikka Phase 1 Project is the most significant development on Alaska's North Slope in more than 20 years.
The permitted Pikka development project includes two additional drill sites. The Alaska assets also include discoveries made from both the Mitquq and Stirrup exploration wells drilled in 2020. These opportunities combine to offer a clear path to long-term growth in Alaska.

Lead the regional business unit's Operations Technology (OT), control system interfaces, and telecommunications functions to enable safe, reliable, and efficient operations across Alaska assets. The role provides strategic direction, technical governance, and operational leadership to ensure system integrity, cybersecurity, lifecycle management, and alignment with business priorities. This position partners with asset teams, projects, and enterprise functions to sustain operational performance, manage risk, and advance digital and automation capabilities.

Key Accountabilities & Responsibilities

-Promote and lead in the implementation of Santos Ltd policies and procedures, including Safety, health, environment, process, people and planning.
-Oversee performance, lifecycle health, obsolescence, and resilience of OT and telecom assets; drive upgrades, patching, redundancy, and hardware refresh programs.
-Manage strategic vendor and supplier relationships, contracts, and service delivery to support operations, projects, and continuous improvement.
-Coordinate scopes of work, maintenance activities, corrective actions, and project deliverables across OT, control systems, and communications infrastructure.
-Ensure compliance with enterprise cybersecurity, reliability, and regulatory requirements (e.g., NIST, NERC CIP where applicable, SOCI, and company standards); lead mitigation of identified risks and gaps.
-Strengthen cybersecurity posture through hardening, segmentation, monitoring, logging, and secure remote access; partner with SOC and network security teams to respond to incidents and vulnerabilities.
-Maintain forward-looking roadmaps, operational workplans, and capital strategies for OT and telecommunications capability aligned to business objectives.
-Support budget planning, forecasting, and cost optimization for systems, services, and infrastructure investments.
-Provide strategic advice to senior leadership on infrastructure risks, opportunities, and long-term direction.
-Collaborate with enterprise OT/engineering functions to align standards, governance, technical authority, and global improvement initiatives.
-Enable collaboration and capability development across BU engineers within OT and control system disciplines.
-Foster a culture of safety, learning, accountability, and continuous improvement within technical teams.
-Ensure compliance with the Santos Management System, Delegation of Authority, corporate governance, and safety requirements.

Qualifications, Skills, and Experience Required

•Degree IT, Engineering (automation/industrial controls), or related, or equivalent experience.
•10 years of experience in OT, industrial networking, automation, or IT infrastructure support.
•Working knowledge of OT network architectures, industrial control systems, and cybersecurity, including implementation of IEC 62443 Industrial Communication Networks - Network and System Security for Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS), IEC 61508 Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems, and IEC 61511 Functional safety - Safety instrumented systems for the process industry sector

•Experience supporting network hardware and control systems in operational environments.
•Knowledge of Crowdstrike, Splunk, and Veeam preferred
•Ability to work safely in live operational settings with strong situational awareness.

•Strong troubleshooting and analytical abilities.
•Effective communication across multiple teams (i.e. Ops, Engineering, IT, GOT).
•Attention to detail and disciplined execution.
•Ability to prioritize competing demands in a dynamic operational environment.
•Commitment to safe work practices, reliability, and continuous improvement.

•Ability to work in a fast-paced environment.
•25% travel to operating facilities.