🧪 We're Hiring: Chemical Safety Manager
📍 Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
🕒 Employment Type: Full-Time
💼 Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior
🌐 Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About Us
We are an organization committed to maintaining the highest standards of chemical safety, occupational health, environmental protection, regulatory compliance, and operational risk management.
Our distributed teams collaborate across EHS, Laboratory Operations, Engineering, Manufacturing, Research & Development, Quality, Procurement, Facilities, Logistics, Legal, Regulatory Affairs, Contractors, Suppliers, and Executive Leadership to ensure chemicals and hazardous materials are safely managed throughout their lifecycle.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Chemical Safety Manager to lead chemical safety programs, hazardous-material management, regulatory compliance, risk assessments, emergency preparedness, chemical inventories, storage controls, and safety training across the organization.
The ideal candidate will combine strong technical knowledge of chemical hazards with regulatory expertise, risk-management capabilities, incident investigation, emergency planning, and cross-functional leadership.
The role will be responsible for establishing chemical-safety standards, assessing hazardous substances and processes, managing chemical inventories, overseeing storage and handling requirements, and ensuring employees and facilities comply with applicable safety and environmental requirements.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and implement comprehensive chemical safety strategies, policies, procedures, standards, and governance frameworks.
- Establish chemical safety programs covering procurement, transportation, receipt, storage, handling, use, transfer, disposal, and emergency response.
- Identify, evaluate, and control risks associated with hazardous chemicals, substances, mixtures, gases, solvents, corrosives, flammables, toxic materials, and other hazardous products.
- Conduct chemical risk assessments, exposure assessments, hazard evaluations, and process-safety reviews where applicable.
- Establish appropriate engineering, administrative, and personal protective controls for chemical hazards.
- Develop and maintain comprehensive chemical inventories, hazardous-material registers, chemical-use records, and storage-location records.
- Ensure Safety Data Sheets (SDS) are current, accessible, properly managed, and available to employees and emergency responders.
- Establish chemical labeling, classification, storage, segregation, compatibility, and handling requirements in accordance with applicable standards and regulations.
- Review chemical purchasing requests and assess safety, regulatory, storage, handling, and disposal requirements before approval where appropriate.
- Work closely with Procurement and suppliers to ensure chemicals are sourced from approved vendors and supplied with appropriate safety documentation.
- Establish procedures for chemical receipt, inspection, labeling, storage, transfer, transportation, and disposal.
- Ensure incompatible chemicals are appropriately segregated and stored according to hazard classification and compatibility requirements.
- Monitor chemical storage areas, laboratories, production facilities, warehouses, and other locations where hazardous materials are used or stored.
- Conduct regular inspections, audits, and compliance assessments of chemical storage and handling areas.
- Identify deficiencies and implement corrective and preventive actions.
- Develop chemical spill-prevention and spill-response programs, including emergency procedures, response equipment, containment requirements, and employee training.
- Coordinate investigations into chemical spills, exposures, incidents, near misses, fires, releases, and other chemical-safety events.
- Conduct root-cause analysis and implement corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
- Establish emergency-response plans for chemical incidents, including evacuation, containment, decontamination, medical response, notification, and regulatory reporting requirements.
- Coordinate chemical emergency preparedness exercises and drills with EHS, Facilities, Security, Emergency Response, and relevant operational teams.
- Develop and deliver chemical-safety training covering hazard communication, SDS interpretation, chemical handling, storage, PPE, spill response, waste management, and emergency procedures.
- Assess employee exposure to hazardous chemicals and coordinate occupational-health monitoring where applicable.
- Work with occupational-health professionals to evaluate chemical exposure risks and appropriate health-protection measures.
- Establish requirements for personal protective equipment and ensure appropriate PPE is selected, maintained, and used.
- Monitor chemical waste management and ensure hazardous waste is properly identified, segregated, stored, transported, treated, and disposed of through approved channels.
- Work with Environmental and Waste Management teams to minimize chemical waste and environmental impact.
- Monitor applicable UAE environmental, occupational-health, hazardous-material, transportation, fire-safety, and chemical-management requirements.
- Maintain a chemical regulatory compliance register and track permits, approvals, inspections, reporting requirements, and regulatory changes.
- Coordinate regulatory inspections, audits, authority visits, and responses to chemical-safety requirements.
- Collaborate with Legal and Regulatory Affairs teams on chemical-related regulatory obligations and compliance matters.
- Review new processes, facilities, equipment, chemicals, and projects to identify chemical-safety requirements before implementation.
- Participate in design reviews, process-change assessments, Management of Change (MOC), commissioning, and operational readiness activities where applicable.
- Evaluate chemical hazards associated with process changes, new equipment, new substances, increased quantities, or changes in operating conditions.
- Establish and monitor chemical-safety KPIs, dashboards, inspection findings, incident trends, exposure indicators, training performance, and corrective actions.
- Maintain comprehensive chemical-safety documentation including inventories, SDS records, risk assessments, inspection reports, training records, incident investigations, permits, waste records, and compliance documentation.
- Manage relationships with chemical suppliers, hazardous-waste contractors, laboratories, consultants, emergency-response providers, and specialist service providers.
- Evaluate new chemical-safety technologies, monitoring systems, inventory-management tools, detection systems, containment solutions, and digital compliance platforms.
- Prepare chemical-safety reports, risk assessments, management reviews, incident reports, regulatory submissions, and executive recommendations.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Performance will be measured through a combination of safety, compliance, environmental, operational, and risk-management KPIs, including:
- Chemical-safety compliance rate
- Chemical incident frequency
- Chemical exposure incidents
- Spill and release frequency
- Near-miss reporting
- Chemical risk-assessment completion
- SDS compliance
- Chemical inventory accuracy
- Storage and segregation compliance
- Chemical inspection performance
- Corrective-action closure rate
- Chemical-safety training completion
- Hazardous-waste compliance
- Regulatory findings
- Emergency-drill performance
- PPE compliance
- Chemical-related audit performance
- Incident investigation closure time
- Chemical-risk reduction
- Environmental impact reduction
Candidate Profile
The successful candidate should have strong experience in chemical safety, industrial hygiene, EHS, laboratory safety, process safety, hazardous-material management, environmental compliance, or a related discipline.
Experience in chemical manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, laboratories, oil and gas, petrochemicals, energy, manufacturing, research, healthcare, mining, or other chemical-intensive environments would be advantageous.
The candidate should have strong technical knowledge of chemical hazards and practical experience implementing chemical-safety programs in complex operational environments.
What You'll Bring
- Proven experience in chemical safety, EHS, industrial hygiene, hazardous-material management, or a related field.
- Strong knowledge of chemical hazard identification and risk assessment.
- Experience managing chemical inventories and hazardous-material registers.
- Strong understanding of Safety Data Sheets, chemical labeling, hazard classification, and communication requirements.
- Experience developing chemical storage, segregation, handling, and transportation procedures.
- Strong knowledge of chemical spill prevention and emergency-response principles.
- Experience investigating chemical incidents, exposures, spills, and near misses.
- Strong understanding of hazardous-waste management.
- Experience conducting EHS audits, inspections, and compliance assessments.
- Familiarity with applicable chemical-safety and environmental regulations and recognized international standards.
- Strong knowledge of PPE selection and chemical exposure controls.
- Experience working with laboratories, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, or other chemical-use environments.
- Excellent communication, training, presentation, and stakeholder-management skills.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
- Strong documentation and regulatory-reporting skills.
- Ability to manage multiple chemical-safety programs, projects, audits, and compliance requirements.
- Highly detail-oriented, safety-conscious, technically rigorous, and proactive.
- Ability to work independently and effectively within a fully remote environment.
- Relevant degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Environmental Science, Occupational Health, Industrial Hygiene, EHS, or a related discipline is advantageous.
- Professional EHS, industrial-hygiene, or chemical-safety certification is advantageous.
- Experience working within the UAE or wider GCC market is advantageous.