Senior Production Engineer

Fervo Energy • Houston, TX

7d • Hybrid

About The Position

Fervo Energy is hiring a Senior Production Engineer to own production surveillance, well optimization, and short-term forecasting across producer wells, injectors, and ESP-driven water supply wells. Reporting to the Production Engineering Manager, the engineer will work closely with Plant Management and Field Operations, contribute technical requirements for the digital surveillance platform, and identify performance issues early to help prevent outages. The role supports a first-of-its-kind geothermal operating environment and includes regular field travel to Cape Station in Milford, Utah, from Fervo’s Houston, Texas office.

The engineer will oversee daily well surveillance and ESP performance monitoring, investigate anomalies and downtime, optimize well and facility performance, and maintain a rolling 90-day production and injection forecast. The role also develops well performance models and surveillance procedures, defines platform KPIs and alert requirements, contributes to cross-functional engineering reviews, supports intervention planning and regulatory reporting, and backs up the Digital Platform PE on surveillance workflows.

Requirements

• B.S. in Petroleum Engineering or a related discipline.
• 7–12 years of production engineering or operations experience, including ownership of well and system surveillance in a live operating environment.
• Demonstrated expertise in production and injection well performance monitoring, anomaly detection, and structured root cause analysis.
• ESP operating experience, including monitoring, troubleshooting, and performance analysis of electric submersible pump systems in a production or water supply/injection context.
• Experience building or running production forecasting workflows, including downtime tracking, variance analysis, and short-term outlooks.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to move from data to diagnosis to action with minimal supervision.
• Proficiency with production data platforms, data visualization tools such as Power BI or Spotfire (or equivalent), SCADA, and historian systems.
• Effective communication with Field Operations, Plant Management, and cross-functional engineering teams.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in geothermal, waterflood, or injection-dominated production systems; experience in closed-loop, hot fluid, or high-scaling-risk environments is a strong plus.
• ESP design or optimization experience beyond monitoring, such as sizing, VFD control, or failure mode analysis.
• Experience with industrial data historians in a real-time surveillance role.
• Track record building surveillance standards, operating procedures, or digital workflows in a new or greenfield operating context.
• Fluency with well nodal analysis and topside network modeling tools.
• Experience mentoring junior engineers or setting technical standards as a senior individual contributor.

Responsibilities

• Own day-to-day surveillance of Cape Station producer, injector, and ESP-driven water supply wells; develop and track KPIs and system performance against operating envelopes.
• Monitor ESP systems on water supply wells, identify degradation, and escalate issues for intervention before failure.
• Conduct exception-based daily well reviews, identify off-trend wells, quantify variance from plan, and lead root cause analysis for anomalies and downtime.
• Serve as the primary technical interface with Field Operations for production questions, operating decisions, and well-level troubleshooting.
• Maintain surveillance procedures, data quality standards, and well review cadence; create documentation that can scale as the team and asset base grow.
• Support SCADA tag taxonomy, cloud historian data quality, and real-time monitoring integrity with the Digital Platform PE and IT.
• Identify operating envelope adjustments, debottlenecking opportunities, and injection rate optimizations to maximize well deliverability and facility capacity utilization.
• Own the rolling 90-day production and injection forecast, incorporating downtime history, well performance trends, and planned operations.
• Track and classify downtime by cause, duration, and affected system; quantify production variance against plan and maintain downtime records for reporting and root cause analysis.
• Develop and maintain well performance models for optimization decisions, operating envelope management, and scenario analysis.
• Track well performance and near-term uplift opportunities to identify underperforming wells and prioritize optimization actions.
• Own technical requirements and represent user needs for the PE digital surveillance platform, translating operational needs into specifications for the Digital Platform PE.
• Define KPI definitions, anomaly detection thresholds, and dashboard requirements for the surveillance platform.
• Provide production engineering inputs, including downtime, operating trends, and forecast variance, to D&C and Central Engineering feed-forward reviews.
• Provide surveillance and performance data for well intervention candidate identification and workover scoping reviews.
• Support state regulatory compliance and monthly production reporting with accurate well-level production and injection records.
• Back up the Digital Platform PE on surveillance workflows and platform operations during absence or redeployment.
• Travel regularly to Cape Station in Milford, Utah, to support well surveillance, ESP troubleshooting, and coordination with Field Operations and Plant Management.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision plan options.
• Employer-paid basic life insurance and short-term and long-term disability coverage.
• 401(k) plan with up to 6% match.
• Flexible paid time off and paid parental leave.
• Family-building, fertility, hormonal health, pregnancy, postpartum, and parenting support through Carrot.
• Dependent care FSA for eligible child and elder care expenses.
• Annual Lifestyle Spending Account for eligible wellness expenses, including fitness, financial planning, pet insurance, and pet care.
• Employee ownership opportunities through the Employee Stock Purchase Program, stock option grants, and bonus opportunities for eligible roles. Benefits and programs are subject to eligibility requirements and may change.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior