Senior Production Engineer in Houston, Texas at Fervo Energy Company

Fervo Energy is building the most cost-effective, repeatable geothermal power plants in the world. As Cape Station, our first commercial-scale Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS), moves toward ORC #1 commercial operations, we are hiring a senior Production Engineer to own the daily performance heartbeat of our well and production system. Reporting to the Production Engineering Manager, this role is the primary owner of production surveillance, well optimization, and short-term forecasting across producers, injectors, and ESP-driven water supply wells. You will work directly with Plant Management and Field Operations, serve as the primary technical voice shaping our digital surveillance platform, and be the engineer who catches performance issues before they become outages.

This role is ideal for an experienced production engineer who brings deep surveillance and optimization expertise, strong ESP operating knowledge, and the drive to build a best-in-class monitoring function from the ground up in a first-of-kind geothermal operating environment.

Responsibilities

Production Surveillance, Daily Operations & ESP Management

• Own day-to-day surveillance of all Cape Station wells: producers, injectors, and ESP-driven water supply wells, developing and tracking KPI and system performance against operating envelopes.
• Performance monitoring of ESP systems on water supply wells; identify degradation early and escalate for intervention before failure.
• Run exception-based daily well review: identify off-trend wells, quantify variance from plan, and lead structured root cause analysis on anomalies and downtime events.
• Serve as the primary technical interface with Field Operations for day-to-day production questions, operating decisions, and well-level troubleshooting.
• Maintain surveillance procedures, data quality standards, and well review cadence; build the documentation others will execute against as the team and asset base grow.
• Support SCADA tag taxonomy, cloud historian data quality, and real-time monitoring integrity in partnership with the Digital Platform PE and IT.

Well Optimization & Production Forecasting

• Maximize well deliverability and facility capacity utilization; identify operating envelope adjustments, debottlenecking opportunities, and injection rate optimizations across the producing and injection system.
• Own the rolling 90-day production and injection forecast: integrate downtime history, well-level performance trends, and planned operations to maintain a reliable short-term outlook.
• Track and classify downtime events by cause, duration, and affected system; quantify production variance against plan and maintain structured downtime records for reporting and RCA.
• Develop and maintain well performance models to support optimization decisions, operating envelope management, and scenario analysis.
• Run well performance tracking and near-term uplift analysis to spot underperforming wells and prioritize optimization actions.

Surveillance Platform, Standards & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Serve as the primary user voice and technical requirements owner for the PE digital surveillance platform; translate operational needs into platform specifications that the Digital Platform PE builds and automates.
• Define KPI definitions, anomaly detection thresholds, and dashboard requirements; ensure the platform reflects real operating priorities, not just available data.
• Contribute production engineering inputs, including downtime, operating trends, and forecast variance, to D&C and Central Engineering feed-forward reviews that drive GeoBlock cost and cycle improvements.
• Provide surveillance and performance data inputs to 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.

Required Qualifications

• B.S. in Petroleum Engineering or related discipline.
• 7-12 years of production engineering or operations experience with 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.
• Required: ESP operating experience; 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; able to work from data to diagnosis to action with minimal supervision.
• Proficiency with production data platforms, data visualization tools (Power BI, Spotfire, or equivalent), SCADA and historian systems.
• Effective communicator with Field Operations, Plant Management, and cross-functional engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in geothermal, waterflood, or injection-dominated production systems; closed-loop, hot fluid, or high-scaling-risk environments are a strong plus.
• ESP design or optimization experience beyond monitoring: 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.
• Fluent with well nodal analysis and topside network modeling tools.
• Experience mentoring junior engineers or setting technical standards as a senior individual contributor.

Location

This role is based at Fervo's Houston, TX office, with regular field travel to Cape Station (Milford, Utah) required to support well surveillance, ESP troubleshooting, and coordination with Field Operations and Plant Management.

Success Profile

• Catches variance early: reviews well and system performance daily and flags off-trend behavior before it becomes downtime.
• Owns issues end-to-end: drives anomalies and downtime events through root cause to resolution, escalating blockers early.
• Builds documentation others can run on: creates surveillance procedures and standards that scale as the team and asset base grow.
• Translates operating needs into platform requirements: partners with the Digital Platform PE to turn real operating priorities into dashboards, thresholds, and alerts.
• Communicates clearly across Field Operations, Plant Management, and engineering, with concrete data and action items.