Senior Specialist – Production Engineer (Petroleum SME)

About the role

AIQ is building software and AI products for well surveillance, artificial‑lift optimisation and autonomous production. We are seeking a petroleum production engineer who has improved the performance of real wells and can translate that experience into reliable digital products. You will provide engineering leadership for electric submersible pump (ESP), gas‑lift and naturally flowing well workflows, collaborating with software engineers, AI scientists and controls specialists to move from diagnosis to validated closed‑loop operation.

Key responsibilities

• Define surveillance and optimisation workflows for ESP wells, covering pump selection, operating range, intake conditions, free gas, motor loading, temperature, vibration, variable‑speed drive settings and failure diagnosis.
• Develop gas‑lift and naturally flowing well workflows, including injection performance, valve behaviour, unloading, instability, choke response and network back‑pressure, while evaluating settings within shared gas‑supply and facility constraints.
• Build, calibrate and challenge well‑performance models using nodal analysis, inflow/outflow relationships, fluid properties and equipment data, partnering with the PTA SME to separate reservoir or skin changes from lift and measurement effects.
• Define engineering requirements for virtual flow metering, sensor validation, anomaly detection and equipment‑health models, specifying reference measurements, uncertainty, alarm usefulness and conditions requiring engineering review.
• Translate operating practices into decision logic for start‑up, shutdown, recovery and optimisation, and work with controls and OT specialists on operating envelopes, permissives, set‑points, ramp limits, fallback behaviour and operator override.
• Lead engineering validation from historical replay and simulation through advisory pilots to supervised closed‑loop trials, defining acceptance criteria for degraded sensors, communications loss and unfamiliar operating conditions.
• Support field trials, investigate failures and measure production, energy and reliability outcomes against credible baselines, converting lessons into reusable requirements, benchmark cases and operator guidance.

Required profile

• Degree in Petroleum Engineering or a related engineering discipline with 12+ years of petroleum production engineering experience, including recent hands‑on work with producing wells.
• Deep ESP engineering expertise demonstrated through selection, diagnosis, optimisation and operational troubleshooting.
• Substantive gas‑lift operating or optimisation experience, able to diagnose performance across multiple equipment vendors.
• Strong well‑performance and nodal‑analysis capability, including fluid properties, multiphase flow, inflow/outflow relationships and interaction between reservoir deliverability and artificial lift.
• Proven delivery of digital well surveillance, remote optimisation or automation workflows into routine field use.
• Practical understanding of Pressure Transient Analysis (PTA) results and their limitations.
• Hands‑on experience with PROSPER, PIPESIM, DesignRite or equivalent well and lift engineering tools.
• Experience defining safe operating envelopes and participating in operational change reviews.

Required skills

• Electric Submersible Pump (ESP) engineering
• Gas‑lift system optimisation
• Nodal analysis and well‑performance modelling
• PROSPER, PIPESIM, DesignRite software proficiency
• Pressure Transient Analysis (PTA) interpretation
• SCADA/historian data analysis
• Python and SQL for engineering analysis
• Model predictive control / advanced process control