Sr. Cost Control Engineer

Mariana Minerals•Houston, TX

3d•$140,000 - $180,000

About The Position

Mariana Minerals is a software-first, vertically integrated minerals company working to supply critical minerals for energy, AI, and defense technologies. It combines industry expertise with software, automation, and data-driven decision-making. The Cost Control Engineer owns the cost baseline, forecast, and change control for Mariana's capital projects. The role builds the work breakdown structure and cost breakdown structure, converts sanctioned estimates into control budgets, tracks commitments and actuals, and produces the estimate at completion used for business planning. Working across engineering, procurement, construction, and finance, the role ensures cost information remains consistent from commitment through accrual, invoice, and capitalized asset. Cost reporting is expected to be generated from connected systems rather than assembled manually. The engineer builds and operates the data pipeline connecting ERP, procurement, and schedule information to reports and dashboards, including reconciliations and exception checks.

Requirements

Bachelor of Science degree in engineering, construction management, finance, or a related field.
5–12 years of project cost control experience on capital projects in mining, minerals, refining, chemicals, power, or heavy civil.
Applied earned value management on a live project and ability to describe where it broke down.
Hands-on experience with a project cost management system such as EcoSys, InEight, Prism, or Procore, and an ERP such as SAP, Oracle, or NetSuite.
Advanced Excel skills and SQL, Power BI, or Python skills sufficient to build reporting.
Experience running a trend and change management process end to end and ability to explain what could be done differently.
Comfort with commitments versus actuals, accruals, capitalization, and funding authorization mechanics.

Nice To Haves

Senior candidates will have owned cost on a project with total installed cost above $100 million.
AACE Certified Cost Professional, Certified Cost Technician, or PMI credentials.

Responsibilities

Build the work breakdown structure and cost breakdown structure with the planner and estimator, convert the sanctioned estimate into a control budget, and establish the baseline.
Track purchase orders, subcontracts, change orders, and field costs, reconciling them to the ERP each month and resolving unexplained variances.
Maintain estimate-to-complete and estimate-at-completion forecasts by control account, documenting the basis for each forecast.
Establish earned-value rules of credit with the planner, measure physical progress, and report cost and schedule performance at an actionable level.
Identify potential changes, quantify them, route them for approval, and maintain the approved budget log.
Track contingency and management reserve against the risk register and report remaining amounts.
Maintain the project cash flow and funding curve for finance and treasury.
Review contractor invoices and progress claims against measured progress and contract terms.
Create, issue, and present project cost reports and leadership dashboards.
Connect cost data from the ERP, procurement, and schedule systems to reports and dashboards; build reconciliations and exception checks to detect inaccurate data.