We're Hiring: Aquaculture Manager
Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior
Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About Us
We are a globally focused organization committed to sustainable aquaculture, responsible aquatic production, resource efficiency, animal health, environmental stewardship, and high-quality seafood production.
Our teams collaborate across Aquaculture Operations, Marine Biology, Fisheries, Veterinary Services, Engineering, Quality, Procurement, Supply Chain, Sustainability, Finance, Commercial, and external technical partners to deliver efficient and environmentally responsible aquaculture programs.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Aquaculture Manager to oversee aquaculture operations, production planning, aquatic animal health, biosecurity, water quality, feeding, facility performance, workforce management, and environmental compliance.
The ideal candidate will combine strong technical knowledge with operational and commercial leadership to maximize production performance, maintain animal welfare, control operating costs, manage risks, and ensure sustainable aquaculture practices.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and implement aquaculture strategies, production plans, operating standards, and performance objectives.
- Manage day-to-day aquaculture operations across farms, hatcheries, nurseries, grow-out systems, tanks, ponds, cages, or related facilities.
- Develop production schedules based on species, stocking plans, growth targets, market demand, facility capacity, and seasonal conditions.
- Establish stocking densities, feeding strategies, growth targets, harvesting plans, and production forecasts.
- Monitor aquatic animal growth, survival, biomass, feed consumption, health, and overall production performance.
- Manage hatchery, nursery, grow-out, harvesting, grading, transfer, and stocking activities where applicable.
- Establish and maintain strong aquatic animal health and biosecurity programs.
- Coordinate disease prevention, surveillance, diagnosis, treatment, quarantine, and health monitoring activities.
- Work closely with aquatic veterinarians, biologists, technicians, and health specialists on animal-health issues.
- Establish procedures for disease control, mortality management, quarantine, disinfection, and movement of stock.
- Monitor water quality parameters including temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity, pH, ammonia, nitrite, turbidity, and other relevant indicators.
- Develop water-quality monitoring schedules and establish corrective actions for abnormal conditions.
- Optimize aeration, filtration, circulation, water exchange, oxygenation, and other environmental-control systems.
- Monitor feeding programs to optimize growth, feed conversion, animal health, and production economics.
- Evaluate feed quality, feeding frequency, feeding rates, and feeding technologies.
- Track feed conversion ratio, feed waste, biomass gain, and feeding efficiency.
- Manage fish, shellfish, algae, or other cultured aquatic species according to applicable production requirements.
- Coordinate harvesting, grading, handling, processing, cold-chain management, and product transfer activities.
- Maintain high standards of animal welfare throughout production, handling, transportation, and harvesting.
- Ensure facilities, tanks, ponds, cages, pumps, aeration systems, filtration systems, sensors, and other equipment remain operational and fit for purpose.
- Coordinate preventive maintenance, repairs, equipment inspections, and infrastructure improvement programs.
- Monitor production facilities for operational risks, equipment failures, environmental changes, and biological threats.
- Develop contingency plans for power failures, oxygen depletion, disease outbreaks, extreme weather, water-quality events, equipment breakdowns, and other emergencies.
- Lead response activities during significant production, animal-health, environmental, or operational incidents.
- Manage aquaculture personnel, supervisors, technicians, operators, contractors, and specialist service providers.
- Establish workforce plans, responsibilities, performance expectations, training programs, and operating procedures.
- Provide technical coaching and ensure personnel follow approved aquaculture practices.
- Manage operating budgets, production costs, labor costs, feed costs, maintenance expenses, and capital requirements.
- Identify opportunities to improve production efficiency and reduce avoidable operating costs.
- Monitor production economics and develop recommendations to improve profitability and resource efficiency.
- Manage relationships with feed suppliers, equipment providers, laboratories, veterinary specialists, contractors, and other aquaculture partners.
- Establish supplier quality, service, delivery, and technical-performance requirements.
- Ensure raw materials, feed, medicines where permitted, equipment, and operational supplies are available when required.
- Maintain accurate production records covering stocking, biomass, growth, feeding, mortality, health, water quality, harvesting, and inventory.
- Develop operational dashboards and management reports covering production, animal health, water quality, costs, and performance.
- Analyze production data to identify trends, losses, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement.
- Implement technology, automation, sensors, remote monitoring, and data-driven systems to improve farm management.
- Ensure aquaculture activities comply with applicable environmental, fisheries, animal-health, food-safety, occupational-safety, and regulatory requirements.
- Maintain required licenses, permits, registrations, certifications, monitoring records, and regulatory documentation.
- Coordinate environmental monitoring and assess impacts associated with water use, nutrient discharge, waste, chemicals, and farm operations.
- Implement measures to minimize environmental impacts and improve resource efficiency.
- Support responsible sourcing and sustainable feed, broodstock, seed, equipment, and operational materials.
- Develop programs to reduce water, energy, feed, chemical, and other resource consumption.
- Coordinate audits, inspections, certifications, customer assessments, and regulatory reviews.
- Investigate production deviations, disease events, mortality increases, quality problems, and operational failures.
- Conduct root-cause analysis and implement corrective and preventive actions.
- Establish continuous-improvement initiatives covering production efficiency, animal health, biosecurity, water management, and operational reliability.
- Collaborate with Commercial and Supply Chain teams to align production with customer requirements, market demand, and delivery schedules.
- Support new species, production systems, technologies, sites, and aquaculture expansion projects.
- Evaluate technical and operational feasibility of new aquaculture initiatives and production investments.
- Provide senior management with regular reports on production performance, risks, financial results, sustainability, and improvement opportunities.
Key Performance Indicators
- Production volume
- Stock survival rate
- Growth rate
- Biomass performance
- Feed conversion ratio
- Feed efficiency
- Mortality rate
- Disease incidence
- Biosecurity compliance
- Water-quality performance
- Harvest yield
- Product quality
- Facility utilization
- Equipment availability
- Production cost per unit
- Labor productivity
- Feed cost efficiency
- Energy and water efficiency
- Regulatory compliance
- Environmental performance
- Safety performance
- Customer satisfaction
- Production forecast accuracy
- Continuous-improvement achievement
Ideal Candidate
The successful candidate should have strong experience in aquaculture operations, fish farming, marine biology, fisheries, aquatic animal production, hatchery management, or related disciplines, preferably within commercial aquaculture, seafood production, research, or large-scale aquatic operations.
The candidate should demonstrate:
- Strong technical understanding of aquaculture production systems and aquatic animal biology.
- Experience managing commercial aquaculture operations and production teams.
- Knowledge of hatchery, nursery, stocking, grow-out, feeding, grading, and harvesting processes.
- Strong understanding of aquatic animal health, disease prevention, and biosecurity.
- Practical knowledge of water-quality management and environmental monitoring.
- Experience with production planning, biomass management, feeding programs, and harvesting schedules.
- Strong understanding of feed management and production-performance metrics.
- Experience managing aquaculture facilities, equipment, infrastructure, and maintenance activities.
- Strong knowledge of environmental, animal-health, food-safety, and aquaculture regulations.
- Experience managing budgets, operating costs, suppliers, contractors, and technical partners.
- Strong analytical and data-management capabilities.
- Ability to respond effectively to biological, environmental, technical, and operational risks.
- Excellent leadership, workforce-management, and stakeholder-management skills.
- Strong problem-solving and decision-making capabilities.
- Familiarity with aquaculture monitoring systems, sensors, farm-management software, and automation technologies.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in English.
- Experience working with international and distributed teams.
- Relevant qualifications in aquaculture, fisheries science, marine biology, aquatic science, veterinary science, agriculture, or a related discipline are highly desirable.