Drilling Data Scientist

Intellicess | Tulsa, Oklahoma (role is hybrid but relocation required if not already in Tulsa)

About Intellicess

Intellicess builds AI-powered drilling advisory and automation software for the oil and gas industry. Our flagship product, Sentinel RT®, combines Bayesian networks with physics-based models to detect drilling events and advise crews in real time. Liken® brings the same hybrid AI and physics approach to historical well performance analysis. We are a small, technical team and everyone here has direct influence on the product and on customer outcomes.

The Role

We are looking for a Drilling Data Scientist to work on the data behind Sentinel RT and Liken. You will turn messy rig data into reliable models, analyses, and product features. You will work closely with the engineering team, and you will be a key technical contributor on a high-visibility pilot with a leading land drilling contractor, partnering directly with their team. Your work will reach operators and drilling contractors.

What You Will Do

• Analyze high-frequency real-time and historical drilling data (surface and downhole sensors, WITSML and other rig data feeds) to find patterns, dysfunctions, and performance opportunities.
• Build and maintain data quality pipelines that clean, validate, and impute drilling data so downstream models can be trusted.
• Develop and validate models for event detection, performance benchmarking, and drilling optimization, combining machine learning with physics-based reasoning.
• Apply signal processing techniques to noisy time-series data (hookload, torque, standpipe pressure, WOB, RPM, ROP, and more).
• Design and prototype LLM-powered features, such as natural-language interfaces to well data, automated reporting, and agentic workflows that support drilling engineers.
• Work closely with the drilling and technology teams of a leading land drilling contractor on a pilot, including scoping data requirements, analyzing rig data, defining success metrics, and presenting results and recommendations.
• Support other customer pilots and field deployments by analyzing results, tuning models, and communicating findings to drilling engineers and operators.
• Write clean, tested, production-quality Python that other engineers can build on.
• Contribute to technical publications and conference presentations (SPE, IADC) where appropriate.

What You Bring

Required

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in petroleum, chemical, mechanical, or a related engineering field, or in data science or computer science with demonstrated drilling domain experience.
• 2 years of professional experience working with drilling or other industrial time-series data, or equivalent graduate research experience.
• Strong, hands-on experience analyzing real drilling data. You understand rig operations, drilling parameters, and what bad data looks like.
• Expert-level Python (pandas, NumPy, SciPy, scikit-learn, and a deep learning framework such as PyTorch), with solid software engineering habits (version control, testing, readable code).
• Practical experience with LLMs: prompting, retrieval, tool use, evaluation, and integrating them into real applications.
• Strong time-series and signal processing skills.
• Comfort working directly with customer engineers and rig-side stakeholders, including occasional travel to customer offices and rig sites.
• Ability to explain technical results clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Willingness to relocate to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Preferred

• Master’s degree or PhD in a related field.
• Experience with Bayesian Networks, probabilistic modeling, or uncertainty quantification.
• Exposure to reinforcement learning, optimization, or control for drilling automation.
• Experience with wellbore positioning, tripping, hookload, torque and drag, or drillstring dynamics analysis.
• Experience with geothermal or unconventional drilling datasets.
• Publications, datathon wins, or open-source work that show how you approach data problems.
• Familiarity with cloud deployment, containers, and data engineering tools.

Why Join Us

• Work on technology proven in the field, including a direct role in a pilot with a leading land drilling contractor.
• Small team, high ownership, and direct access to the people who invented the underlying technology.
• A chance to shape how LLMs and agentic AI are applied to drilling.
• Visa sponsorship: We are willing to sponsor H-1B visas for qualified candidates.
• Competitive salary, equity, and health benefits: $110K to $130K depending on experience and background.
• Intellicess is an equal opportunity employer.