Senior Director of Drilling Operations
industrial_energy_operations › Drilling Operations · M6 — M6 — Vice President · Management
Senior executive who leads the entire drilling operations function, setting strategy and overseeing multiple managers across engineering support, equipment, and planning.
Median pay · United States · annual
$241,631 USD
▲ +182.2% vs M1 on this ladder
Typical range ()
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6 of 8
Track
Management
Family rungs priced
M1 · M2 · M3 · M4 · M5 · M6
—
Coordinates
2 / 4 spaces
pay@2 · 2026-07
What this role is
Senior executive who leads the entire drilling operations function, setting strategy and overseeing multiple managers across engineering support, equipment, and planning. At the Vice President (M6) level, the role owns a major function or division, enterprise priorities and external factors, and drives division-wide / organization-wide. Leads the leadership of a division.
What this level does
- Oversees drilling operations across multiple assets or divisions through senior managers, setting long-term operational strategy affecting company drilling success.
- Challenges complexity and drives standardization within the affiliate and across affiliates to institutionalize best-practice drilling.
- Defines abstract, cross-functional resolutions to well-delivery, technology-adoption, and HSE issues spanning the enterprise.
- Negotiates with executives and major partners on critical drilling matters — contracting strategy, capital allocation, and campaign risk.
- Shapes the enterprise drilling roadmap including adoption of automated drilling systems, closed-loop controls, and RSS/MWD technology.
- Knowledge applied
- Shapes long-term enterprise drilling strategy and technology roadmap across assets/divisions.
- Complexity & problem solving
- Addresses abstract, cross-functional problems; drives standardization and best practice across affiliates.
- Collaboration & interaction
- Negotiates with executives and major partners on critical drilling matters; policy influencer.
- Typical experience
- 12–15+ years of deep drilling leadership across assets or divisions.
Skills at this level
- Drilling procedures and equipment operation
- — Applies thorough understanding of drilling procedures and safety protocols and the technical ability to operate and direct crews on a variety of drill rigs and related machinery.
- Well control including MPD/UBD principles
- — Directs crews through well control situations applying managed pressure drilling and underbalanced drilling principles during complex hole sections.
- Directional drilling
- — Guides BHA design, motor/RSS steering, and anti-collision decisions on the rig to keep the wellbore on the planned trajectory.
- Drilling fluids and cementing
- — Coordinates mud circulation and cementing programs with specialists, adjusting fluid parameters for the formations encountered during operations.
- Automated drilling systems and closed-loop controls
- — Adopts and supervises automated drilling systems and closed-loop controls as the technology upgrades the operator and crew skill set.
- Drilling cost and budget control
- — Controls drilling expenditures against budgeted cost while optimizing rig- and service-contract utilization to deliver wells on time and within budget.
- Crew leadership and rig-floor safety
- — Manages rig crews across shifts with a commitment to safety, directing personnel through the complexities of drilling operations and enforcing HSE compliance.
- Drilling logs and operations reporting
- — Ensures accurate capture of drilling logs — depth, drilling speed, and geological formations encountered — to inform operational decisions.
- Wellbore trajectory and feasibility planning
- — Conducts feasibility studies and reconciles wellbore trajectory designs with field-executed drilling to optimize operations.
- Lessons learned and standardization
- — Captures and disseminates REX and postmortem analysis, organizes debriefings, and drives standardization within and across affiliates.
- Cross-functional drilling coordination
- — Works with geologists and drilling specialists to determine the best drilling methods and locations for the program.
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As of · 2026-07-30
Edition · canon-v2@2.1.0-complete
Source · canon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)
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