Technical Director - Energy Oil & Gas
QA
Job Summary
The Technical Director serves as the senior technical gatekeeper for UCC Energy Venezuela’s oil, gas, and exploration investments. Reporting to the CEO - UCC Energy Venezuela, the role protects capital, assures technical integrity, independently challenges operator and partner assumptions, and translates complex technical risk into clear, Board-ready investment recommendations.
UCC Energy Venezuela is evaluating a portfolio of upstream opportunities and must operate as a technically informed investor and non-operating partner while maintaining decision speed, credibility, and robust governance. The role establishes the technical assurance framework and ensures that each investment recommendation is supported by reliable subsurface, drilling, production, facilities, HSE, cost, schedule, execution, and commercial evidence.
The position works closely with the Group CEO Energy, Finance & Economics, Legal, HR, Administration/Contracting, operators, authorities, and external advisors. The role balances speed with capital discipline and prevents over-commitment where data quality, asset risk, execution readiness, or monetization pathways are insufficiently understood.
Job Responsibilities 1
1. Technical Governance & Assurance Framework
Create and maintain decision gates, assurance checklists, peer-review protocols, risk registers, minimum technical standards, and evidence requirements for asset screening, investment approval, development concepts, and execution readiness.
2. Portfolio Screening & Capital Protection
Rank and challenge opportunities using consistent criteria covering cash flow, reserves and resource upside, capital intensity, payback, rate of return, execution complexity, partner alignment, and compliance risk. Recommend whether opportunities should advance, be reworked, deferred, or rejected.
3. Subsurface, Reservoir & Reserves Assurance
Challenge OOIP/GIIP, recovery factors, decline curves, productivity, pressure support, geological and reservoir models, reserves and resource ranges, depletion strategies, production forecasts, and uncertainty across oil, gas, and exploration assets.
4. Drilling, Completion & Workover Assurance
Assure well design, rig and service requirements, well sequencing, workover inventory, technical limits, contractor capability, service costs, logistics, schedule, contingency provisions, and HSE controls before commitment and during execution.
5. Production Operations, Facilities & Asset Integrity
Identify short-cycle production recovery, optimization, debottlenecking, integrity, and reliability requirements. Challenge assumptions related to uptime, maintenance backlog, processing, compression, utilities, export systems, pipelines, brownfield modifications, and infrastructure dependencies.
Job Responsibilities 2
6. Gas Development & Monetization Interface
Assess reservoir deliverability, treatment, compression, pipelines, export and tie-in routes, and provide disciplined technical inputs for LNG, petrochemicals, gas-to-power, domestic supply, export, and offtake options.
7. HSE, Cost, Schedule & Execution Readiness
Ensure HSE, process safety, environmental, operational, and technical integrity risks are identified and mitigated. Challenge estimates, schedules, contracting strategies, logistics plans, and readiness evidence to confirm that proposed commitments are realistic and controlled.
8. Board, Partner & Authority Interface
Prepare concise Board-ready technical recommendations explaining value, uncertainty, risks, alternatives, and approval conditions. Lead or support technical workshops with operators, partners, ministries, authorities, lenders, and external advisors while maintaining independent challenge and constructive alignment.
9. Multidisciplinary Technical Leadership
Integrate subsurface, wells, production, facilities, HSE, project controls, economics, and contracting inputs into coherent technical advice. Build proportionate standards, expert-review networks, lessons learned, and capability suitable for a lean, fast-moving energy platform.
10. Digital, Data & AI-Enabled Assurance
Promote traceable technical data, disciplined assumptions, controlled models, and clear version management. Apply analytical tools, dashboards, automation, and responsible AI to improve scenario analysis, risk visibility, peer review, and decision-support quality
Additional Responsibilities 3
Job Knowledge & Skills
Integrated Upstream Technical Expertise: Deep knowledge across subsurface, wells, production operations, facilities, asset integrity, HSE, project controls, economics, and contracting interfaces.
Technical Assurance & Decision Gates: Ability to establish proportionate assurance frameworks, independent reviews, risk registers, minimum standards, and evidence-based investment gates.
Asset Evaluation & Capital Discipline: Ability to evaluate reserves, production, development concepts, cost, schedule, execution risk, economics, and value drivers while protecting against unsupported assumptions.
Executive Communication & Stakeholder Influence: Ability to translate complex technical uncertainty into clear, Board-ready decisions and maintain constructive challenge with operators, partners, advisors, ministries, and authorities.
Leadership Judgment & Delivery Focus: Independent, fact-based, commercially disciplined, practical, and decisive, with the ability to sustain rigor, speed, credibility, and governance in lean and high-accountability environments.
Job Experience
Upstream Oil & Gas Leadership: Minimum 20 years of progressive upstream oil and gas experience, including senior responsibility in technical assurance, field development, asset evaluation, operations, drilling and workover, reservoir, production, or integrated technical leadership.
Investment & Partner Environment: Substantial experience evaluating oil, gas, and exploration opportunities and challenging operator or partner assumptions in investor, non-operating partner, joint-venture, advisory, or governance environments.
Executive Decision Support: Demonstrated ability to integrate multidisciplinary evidence, communicate technical uncertainty, and provide clear recommendations to CEOs, Boards, partners, ministries, authorities, and external advisors.
Competencies
Education