Aquaculture Manager

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 developing efficient, sustainable, and responsible aquaculture operations across diverse production environments. Our teams combine aquaculture science, farm operations, engineering, animal health, environmental management, supply chain, quality, and commercial expertise to produce healthy aquatic species efficiently and consistently.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Aquaculture Manager to lead aquaculture production strategy, farm operations, aquatic animal health, water-quality management, biosecurity, feeding, technology adoption, sustainability, and operational performance.

The ideal candidate will oversee the full production cycle from hatchery and nursery operations through grow-out, harvesting, and post-harvest coordination, while maintaining high standards of animal welfare, environmental responsibility, product quality, operational efficiency, and regulatory compliance.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement aquaculture strategies aligned with production, commercial, sustainability, and operational objectives.
• Manage day-to-day aquaculture operations across hatchery, nursery, grow-out, and harvesting activities where applicable.
• Develop production plans covering stocking, biomass, growth targets, survival, feeding, harvesting, and production cycles.
• Establish production schedules based on capacity, species requirements, market demand, environmental conditions, and available resources.
• Monitor stocking densities and ensure production systems operate within appropriate biological and technical limits.
• Manage production performance across ponds, tanks, cages, raceways, recirculating systems, or other aquaculture environments.
• Monitor growth rates, biomass, feed consumption, survival, mortality, and feed-conversion performance.
• Develop and maintain feeding strategies appropriate to species, life stage, environmental conditions, and production objectives.
• Optimize feeding frequency, ration levels, feeding methods, and feed utilization.
• Monitor feed quality, inventory, storage, handling, and supplier performance.
• Establish water-quality management programs covering temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, salinity, ammonia, nitrite, alkalinity, turbidity, and other relevant parameters.
• Monitor water-quality trends and establish operating limits, alerts, and corrective actions.
• Manage water exchange, aeration, filtration, circulation, oxygenation, and water-treatment systems as applicable.
• Oversee operation and optimization of recirculating aquaculture systems and related filtration technologies where applicable.
• Develop aquatic animal health and disease-prevention programs.
• Establish biosecurity protocols covering personnel, equipment, water sources, stock movement, visitors, quarantine, disinfection, and farm access.
• Monitor fish, shrimp, shellfish, or other cultured species for disease, stress, abnormal behavior, injury, and mortality.
• Coordinate disease diagnostics, laboratory testing, veterinary support, and specialist investigations.
• Lead responses to disease outbreaks, mortality events, water-quality incidents, and other biological emergencies.
• Establish quarantine and isolation procedures for new or potentially affected stock.
• Monitor animal welfare and ensure appropriate handling, stocking, transport, harvesting, and operational practices.
• Coordinate vaccination, treatment, health screening, and preventive-health programs where applicable.
• Maintain accurate records of animal health, treatments, mortality, growth, feeding, stocking, and production performance.
• Coordinate hatchery and broodstock programs where applicable.
• Manage broodstock selection, spawning, egg collection, larval development, nursery production, and juvenile quality.
• Monitor hatchery parameters and optimize survival and growth during sensitive early-life stages.
• Establish stock-quality standards for transfers between production stages and facilities.
• Coordinate harvesting schedules based on biomass, biological readiness, customer requirements, capacity, and market conditions.
• Manage harvesting procedures to minimize stress, mortality, product damage, and quality deterioration.
• Coordinate post-harvest handling, grading, chilling, packing, storage, and transfer to downstream operations.
• Work with Quality and Food Safety teams to maintain product quality, traceability, hygiene, and applicable food-safety requirements.
• Ensure aquaculture operations comply with applicable environmental, animal-health, food-safety, occupational-safety, and regulatory requirements.
• Monitor environmental impacts including nutrient discharge, water consumption, waste, sludge, escapes, chemical use, and ecosystem interactions.
• Develop environmental monitoring programs and maintain required records and reports.
• Establish procedures for responsible use and disposal of chemicals, medicines, disinfectants, and other controlled materials.
• Coordinate waste-management and effluent-management practices.
• Develop escape-prevention and response procedures for cage, pond, tank, or other production systems.
• Assess environmental risks associated with storms, flooding, temperature changes, salinity shifts, harmful algal events, and other external conditions.
• Develop contingency plans for disease outbreaks, equipment failures, power interruptions, oxygen shortages, water-quality deterioration, extreme weather, and other emergencies.
• Monitor farm infrastructure, pumps, aerators, feeders, filtration systems, oxygen systems, sensors, tanks, ponds, cages, and other production equipment.
• Coordinate preventive and corrective maintenance with Engineering and Maintenance teams.
• Evaluate automation, sensors, remote monitoring, feeding systems, machine vision, and other technologies that can improve production performance.
• Implement digital monitoring and data-management systems for production, water quality, feeding, animal health, and environmental performance.
• Analyze operational and biological data to identify trends, bottlenecks, production risks, and improvement opportunities.
• Establish production dashboards and management reports covering biomass, growth, survival, feed, water quality, health, costs, and output.
• Develop production budgets and monitor operating costs including feed, energy, labor, medicines, chemicals, equipment, and other inputs.
• Analyze production economics, cost per kilogram, feed cost, labor productivity, mortality costs, and overall farm profitability.
• Support capital-investment decisions for new farms, expansion, equipment, automation, water-treatment systems, and technology upgrades.
• Manage aquaculture suppliers, feed manufacturers, equipment providers, laboratories, veterinary specialists, contractors, and technical consultants.

Key Performance Indicators

• Total production volume
• Biomass produced
• Production yield
• Growth rate
• Specific growth rate
• Survival rate
• Mortality rate
• Feed conversion ratio
• Feed utilization efficiency
• Feed cost per unit of production
• Stocking density
• Stocking accuracy
• Juvenile quality
• Hatchery survival rate
• Nursery survival rate
• Hatchery production volume
• Larval or juvenile growth performance
• Broodstock performance
• Harvest yield
• Harvest recovery rate
• Product quality
• Water-quality compliance
• Dissolved oxygen performance
• pH compliance
• Temperature stability
• Ammonia and nitrite control
• Water-use efficiency
• Energy consumption per unit of production
• Disease incidence
• Disease-related mortality
• Biosecurity compliance
• Health-screening completion
• Treatment compliance
• Environmental compliance
• Effluent-quality performance
• Waste-management compliance
• Escape incidents
• Equipment availability
• Aeration and oxygen-system reliability
• Production downtime
• Cost per kilogram produced
• Labor productivity
• Farm operating cost
• Production budget performance
• Supplier performance
• Regulatory compliance
• Safety performance
• Training completion
• Automation adoption
• Continuous-improvement savings
• Overall farm profitability

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in aquaculture production, fish farming, shrimp farming, hatchery management, aquatic animal health, farm operations, marine biology, fisheries, or aquaculture engineering, preferably within commercial aquaculture, seafood production, research, or large-scale farming environments.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Strong knowledge of commercial aquaculture production systems and operating practices.
• Experience managing aquaculture operations across hatchery, nursery, grow-out, or harvesting stages.
• Strong understanding of aquatic animal biology, nutrition, growth, stocking, and production cycles.
• Experience managing water quality and aquatic environmental conditions.
• Strong knowledge of biosecurity, disease prevention, aquatic animal health, and mortality management.
• Experience with feeding programs, feed optimization, and feed-conversion analysis.
• Familiarity with RAS, ponds, tanks, cages, raceways, aeration, oxygenation, filtration, and water-treatment systems.
• Experience monitoring production data, biomass, growth, survival, feed consumption, and operational performance.
• Strong understanding of environmental compliance and sustainable aquaculture practices.
• Experience managing farm personnel, technicians, contractors, suppliers, and specialist service providers.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Experience developing production plans, budgets, KPIs, and operational reports.
• Strong understanding of food safety, traceability, product quality, and post-harvest requirements.
• Experience responding to disease outbreaks, equipment failures, environmental events, and production emergencies.
• Strong project-management and stakeholder-management skills.
• Familiarity with aquaculture monitoring systems, sensors, automation, farm-management software, or data platforms.