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Key statistics

The identity block — every fact is canon, none is generated.

6 of 8

Track

Individual contributor

Family rungs priced

P1 · P2 · P3 · P4 · P5 · P6 · P7

17-0000

industrial_energy_operations

Coordinates

3 / 4 spaces

pay@2 · 2026-07

What this role is

Individual-contributor mining engineer who sets technical direction for mine planning and design across a site or multiple operations. At the Principal Professional (P6) level, the role owns organization-wide architecture and the hardest problems, strategic, open-ended problems shaping the technical future, and drives organization-wide. Recognized authority; multiplies many teams.

What this level does

Own mine and geotechnical designs whose failure endangers lives — pit slopes, ventilation networks, ground support — replacing trial-and-error with predictive calculation of factors of safety before the design is built
Lead the development of mining engineering designs organization-wide, ensuring compliance with safety and environmental regulations and setting the safety hypothesis the wider team relies on
Resolve conflicting cross-discipline trade-offs on incomplete or uncertain geotechnical knowledge, using tests as the ultimate authority under doubt
Provide high-level mentorship to senior engineers and act as recognized thought leader influencing mine design standards across projects

Knowledge applied: Field-shaping authority who replaces trial-and-error with predictive calculation for life-critical mine and geotechnical structures.
Complexity & problem solving: Visionary problem-solving under uncertain geotechnical knowledge; must get slope, ground-support, and ventilation designs right the first time.
Collaboration & interaction: Influences design standards across the organization and industry; provides high-level mentorship and sets the safety hypothesis peers rely on.
Typical experience: 15+ years; principal expert, often PhD plus demonstrated engineering leadership.

Skills at this level

Mining engineering domain knowledge: — Applies comprehensive knowledge of surface and underground mining practices — explosives engineering, rock mechanics, ventilation, mine planning, and continuous improvement — to design and sequence extraction of mineral deposits.
Subsurface survey and site characterization: — Conducts subsurface surveys to determine the characteristics of potential land or mining development sites and analyzes results to assess the presence and extraction potential of geological deposits.
Mine planning and modeling software: — Uses mine modeling and planning packages (Whittle, Surpac, Minesight, Vulcan, Deswik) to design mine structure, run pit/Whittle optimization, and build development and operations schedules.
Surveying and CAD drafting: — Performs mine engineering surveying and produces engineering drawings and material-handling layouts in AutoCAD and MicroStation to communicate design intent.
Pit optimization and mine scheduling: — Determines optimal pit shapes and development/operations sequencing, including ore blending, to maximize recovery and value within economic and ground-condition constraints.
Geotechnical and slope stability analysis: — Analyzes rock mechanics and slope stability (e.g., in GeoStudio) to predict factors of safety and prevent failure of life-critical mine structures before they are built.
Feasibility and economic analysis: — Performs economic analysis and prepares pre-feasibility and feasibility mine technical reports that inform capital and development decisions.
Reclamation, environmental compliance and permitting: — Develops solutions for land reclamation, water and air pollution, and sustainability, and oversees documentation, evaluation, and approval of mine engineering and reclamation permits.
Production oversight and project management: — Project manages the mining production process, delegates and tracks production, and monitors projects to ensure efficient, on-budget operations.
Technical writing and communication: — Prepares mine technical reports, monthly production reports, and work instructions for other workers — cited as the most important skill for a mine engineer.
Engineering problem-solving: — Diagnoses and resolves technical and operational problems arising in mining work, from routine field issues to precedent-free failure analysis.
Detail orientation and safety assurance: — Ensures mine engineering plans and instructions are accurate and safe and comply with safety and environmental regulations.
Technical strategy and direction-setting: — Sets long-term technical direction and mine development roadmaps for multiple teams to execute, shaping design standards across the organization and industry.

Model-authored from 17 retrieved sources, then adversarially reviewed by an independent judge panel and held to a minimum-evidence floor before publication. Distinct from corpus-extracted content, which is labelled as such.

Pay across the ladder

Mining Engineering — median with , by . Real canon data.

National-base pricing — this family's function differential is pending review, so dollar levels are not function-adjusted (level-over-level % is unaffected).

Pay figures are modeled estimates from our market equation — level-differentiated, with honest-wide bands. They refresh as new leveling evidence lands; treat per-role dollars as directional.

Demand — is the field growing, or just turning over?

SOC 17-0000 · national

Employment growth 2019–2024, BLS OEWSobserved

+7.8%Mining and Geological Engineers, Including Mining Safety Engineers · United States

6,280 → 6,770 jobs

400 openings / year, split into:

replacement / exits 395

Growth — new jobs (1%)Exits — backfill (99%)

1% of hiring here is genuine expansion; the rest backfills people who move on.

Projected growth 2024–34 expanding: +0.7%
Growth share of hiring: 1%
Exit / retention pressure high: 99%
Openings / year: 400

Two quantities, kept apart: observed = employment growth differenced from two BLS OEWS vintages (what already happened); projected = BLS Employment Projections 2024–34, openings decomposed into growth + exits (growth derived from projected employment change). Neither is a pay figure.

Where this role sits — growth vs. pay

level P6 held

Demand axis is projected growth (not raw openings — that just measures churn). A curated, de-duplicated set of recognizable occupations held at this level; this role is highlighted.

Where it pays — by metro

OEWS metro median

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA$314k

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA$281k

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV$260k

Boulder, CO$257k

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA$257k

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH$246k

Lexington Park, MD$240k

Trenton-Princeton, NJ$238k

Pay only — metro-level demand isn't in public data (it needs job postings). National median $188k; the demand-cube initiative will add growth-by-metro.

What changes across the ladder

Level-distinction canon isn't available for the adjacent levels of this profile yet.

Level differentiators

What separates P6 (P6 — Principal Professional) from the levels around it — this level only. Every word is real canon for this profile.

Scope: Organization-wide architecture and the hardest problems
Autonomy: Defines direction; minimal oversight
Complexity: Strategic, open-ended problems shaping the technical future
Impact: Organization-wide
Decision rights: Sets technical strategy for a major area
Leadership: Recognized authority; multiplies many teams

Full level-by-level matrix (side by side across the ladder) lives on the Ladder drill-down — not here.

Promotion

The next rung from P6 is P7.

Performance criteria for this profile render in the assessment kit →

People also watch

Nearest coordinate neighbors — same , same level. Each row's (confident / review / no match) comes from its — computed, not curated.

Profile	Key	Median	Δ structural
Senior Director of Mining Engineering	jf_mining_engineering::M6	$241,631†	confident0.06
Staff Mining Engineer	jf_mining_engineering::P5	$138,423†	confident0.06
Distinguished Mining Engineer	jf_mining_engineering::P7	$231,230†	confident0.06
Chief Mining Officer	jf_mining_engineering::E5	$340,737†	confident0.12

†National-base pricing — this family's function differential is pending review, so the dollar level is not function-adjusted.

Capability cluster

O*NET 17-2151

Core to this role. Click any element with an ⓘ for its O*NET definition. A job-specific capability model (SkillFrame) will sharpen this and add worked examples.

The Job Swatch

P6

jf_mining_engineering::P6

Principal Mining Engineer

Mining Engineering

The swatch is JobFrame's core primitive: a hueset deterministically by the role's superfunction, the profileKey as its color code, the level ladder, and a content fingerprint. Two swatches that look alike are alike.

Because every role carries computable coordinates, similarity, leveling, and pricing become measurable instead of arguable— the whole point of "Pantone for jobs."

Structural

structural@1

Where it sits— position in the work taxonomy + level (weighted Gower, level > function > focus).

Track: P
Superfunction: industrial_energy_operations
Function: engineering_expansion
Family: mining_engineering
Universal level: 6 / 8

Content

content@2

What it's about— a fingerprint over the role's tasks & capabilities.

Two roles can sit far apart structurally yet be close in content — that gap is itself a signal.

3-state matching

How any two swatches compare — a real distance in coordinate space, resolved to a calibrated verdict (never a fake "94% match").

Aeronautical · P6review0.17

Agricultural · P6review0.17

Agronomist · P6review0.17

Application Services · P6review0.17

Chemical · P6review0.17

Communication · P6review0.17

Editions — frozen & versioned

structural@1live

Released 2026-06-17

content@2live

Released 2026-07-28

pay@2live

Released 2026-07-02

semantic@1live

Released 2026-07-02

Coordinates belong to a frozen, versioned edition — a coordinate computed today still means the same thing next quarter. Re-fitting issues a new edition, so comparisons are never silently redefined.

How to read this profile

Every number here is traceable — to a named source, a stated method, and an as-of date — and each value is labeled by how we know it: observed from data, computed by a model, projected forward, or governed canon. Nothing is a black box, and nothing is invented to fill a gap.

Where every number comes from

What	Source & method	Edition	State
Median pay + range	JobFrame pay equation (function base × family multiplier × level × focus differential)	pay@2	computed
Pay across the ladder	Same equation applied at each universal level	pay@2	computed
Demand — growth & openings	BLS Employment Projections; openings decomposed into growth + exits	EP 2024–34	projected
Pay by metro	BLS OEWS metropolitan medians	OEWS 2024	observed
Level distinctions	JobFrame universal-level canon (scope · autonomy · complexity · impact · decision rights · leadership)	canon	canon
Capability cluster	O*NET Knowledge / Skills / Abilities	O*NET 17-2151	computed
Coordinates	JobFrame coordinate system — structural (weighted Gower) + content fingerprint	structural@1 · content@2 · pay@2 · semantic@1	computed
Related roles	Nearest neighbors in the structural coordinate space	structural@1	computed

The principles behind the numbers

Ranges, not false precision

Pay is P10 · median · P90, never a single misleading number.

Three honest states, never a fake %

Role matches resolve to confident / review / no-match — a calibrated verdict, not a made-up percentage.

Provenance on every value

Each number carries whether it's observed, computed, projected, or canon — so you always know how much to lean on it.

Gaps shown as gaps

When a figure isn't available at the grain you need, we say so — we don't fabricate a number to fill the cell.

Frozen, versioned editions

Pay and coordinate editions are pinned, so a comparison you make today still means the same thing next quarter.

Privacy by min-N

Any aggregate over people is suppressed below a minimum count, so no individual is identifiable.

Freshness

As of2026-07-30Editioncanon-v2@2.1.0-completeSourcecanon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)