Senior Area Facing Data Manager

Entity:

• Technology
• Job Family Group:

• IT&S Group
• Job Description:

About us

Our purpose is to bring together people, energy and markets to power and navigate a changing world. In a time of constant change and possibility we need new talent to pursue commercial opportunities, fueled by extraordinary insight and expertise. We’re always striving for more innovative digital solutions, sustainable outcomes and closer collaboration across our company and beyond, and you could be part of that too. Together we continue to grow as the world’s leading energy company!

Entity

Technology

Job Family Group

IT&S Group / Subsurface Group (confirm with Reward)

Job title

Senior Area Facing Data Manager (AFDM) – Level H

Grade / level

Level H – confirm banding with Reward prior to posting

Location

Houston, Texas, United States of America

Experience level

Intermediate to Senior

Business supported

Gulf of America (GoA) Exploration

Key interfaces

GoA Exploration leadership and subsurface community; Geophysics and Geology Domain Team leads, Pune or equivalent experience; Lead AFDMs and the Western Hemisphere AFDM team; Level I AFDMs; data management vendors

About the role

As our Area Facing Data Manager for Gulf of America (GoA) Exploration, you’ll lead the data relationship for one of bp’s most significant exploration portfolios. You’ll set the data strategy for the asset, hold the pipeline of work, and be the person the business trusts when a seismic positioning or data quality question really matters.

This is still a hands-on role – you’ll be the one who solves the problems that can’t be passed on. But it comes with real autonomy. You’ll run your portfolio without day-to-day supervision, represent Digital Data Management directly to GoA Exploration leadership, lead improvement projects that span several teams, and bring on the AFDMs coming up behind you.

What you’ll do

Partnering with the business

Lead the data relationship for GoA Exploration – the senior point of contact, and where the hard or contested requests land.

Set and deliver the data strategy for the asset, lined up with the business work programme, and get the people who matter behind it.

Find where data gaps are costing the business, size the problem, and make the case for fixing it.

Represent Digital Data Management to GoA Exploration leadership, domain leads and delivery leads, including at governance forums and planning sessions.

Make the priority calls when demand outstrips capacity – and be able to explain and defend them. Supervise how your portfolio is performing and report the impact to Lead AFDMs.

Develop and apply data standards, give to how we set standards across the Western Hemisphere, and own training and onboarding for the subsurface community.

Lead project set-up, loading campaigns and data handover for exploration wells and farm-in/farm-out evaluations.

Leading seismic and well data

Lead the health of the 2D and 3D seismic estate across Petrel, Studio and our GoA repositories – rolling your sleeves up on the sophisticated loads yourself.

Be the technical authority on trace headers and geometry – byte locations, CDP X/Y assignment, coordinate scalars, sample intervals and trace length. You’ll take the cases' nobody else can crack, then write up the fix so it’s solved for good.

Own CRS assurance for the portfolio, and hold the final call on whether data are correctly positioned before it goes to interpreters.

Set the standards for survey geometries, volume realisations and depth/time settings, and review what the domain teams deliver against them.

Assure the quality of well data across the portfolio, and handle the sophisticated or high-priority loading and remediation personally.

Define the data quality rules, lead the defect backlog, and drive fixes to closure with data owners, domain teams and vendors.

Lead the strategy for data volumes, storage and lifecycle – with real cost savings to show for it – and the controls that keep licensed and multi-client data in the right hands.

Gulf of America Lease Sale support

Own data readiness end to end for the bi-annual Gulf of America Lease Sales – fixed external deadlines, high visibility, and the busiest period in our calendar.

Lead the planning for each cycle: agree requirements with Exploration and New Ventures leadership, find the coverage gaps over blocks of interest, and secure what’s missing – including new licensing or reprocessing – well before evaluation starts.

Build and run the delivery plan over nominated blocks, and own the call on positioning accuracy and licence entitlement for everything the evaluation team uses.

Negotiate the extra capacity you need from the Pune teams and vendors, and raise resourcing risk early rather than absorbing it quietly.

Lead handover on the blocks we win, and run a proper lessons-learned so the next cycle goes better.

Working with our domain teams in Pune

Build strong working relationships with the domain leads in Pune – this partnership is one of the things that makes or breaks the role.

Lead the demand pipeline and how work is triaged, setting the definition of ready and definition of done standards for the portfolio and coaching others to meet them.

Delegate to the domain guides, step in when delivery or quality slips, and have the honest conversations with domain leads when standards aren’t being met.

Decide where routine work ends and project work begins, shape the service catalogue, and bring resourcing decisions to your manager with a clear recommendation.

Drive improvements to how we triage and hand over work across the Western Hemisphere AFDM team, and set the tone in dataOps stand-ups and retrospectives.

Improvement projects and doing things properly

Lead data improvement projects – quality remediation, legacy data rescue, repository consolidation, metadata enrichment, storage reduction – from case through to benefits, including work spanning several teams and delivery partners.

Own planning and tracking in Azure DevOps, and build the boards, queries and dashboards that give people a view they can rely on.

Present delivery updates to your manager, Lead AFDMs and business interested parties – including the risks and resourcing calls, with a recommendation attached.

Make sure we stay on the right side of bp’s data management, records, export control and offshore regulatory requirements, and write up the workflows and procedures that make good practice stick.

Champion automation and AI where it genuinely reduces repetitive work and improves quality at source – and share what you build with the wider team.

Handle what our vendors deliver: agree scope, review the technical work, accept results and feed into performance discussions.

Leading technically and bringing others on

Guide and mentor Level I AFDMs, reviewing their work where the risk or complexity explains it and helping them grow.

Be the person people come to on seismic data management, geodesy and CRS – and build the wider team’s capability through knowledge sharing and good documentation.

Step in for Lead AFDMs or your manager in agreed forums when needed.

Education

A degree or equivalent experience in Geoscience, Geophysics, Geology, Earth Science, Information Management, Computer Science or a related technical subject – that shows you can do the job.

What you’ll bring

Substantial experience in subsurface, seismic or geoscience data management.

Sophisticated hands-on Petrel skills, including project set-up and administration and the Petrel–Studio transfer workflow – enough to diagnose the problems other people bring up.

Deep SEG-Y expertise – non-standard byte locations, awkward geometry, and validating positioning on datasets with poor or missing documentation.

Validated understanding of coordinate reference systems, projections, datums and unit conversions for offshore seismic data – enough that