We're Hiring: Horticulture 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 agricultural organization committed to productive, sustainable, and high-quality horticultural operations. Our work emphasizes crop performance, plant health, soil and water management, quality assurance, efficient resource use, environmental stewardship, and continuous improvement.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Horticulture Manager to lead horticultural production and operations across nurseries, farms, greenhouses, orchards, landscapes, or other controlled and open-field growing environments.
The successful candidate will oversee crop planning, plant health, irrigation, nutrition, pest management, propagation, harvesting, workforce management, technology, budgets, quality, and sustainable production practices.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and implement horticultural production strategies aligned with business and market objectives.
- Prepare seasonal and annual production plans for horticultural crops and plants.
- Manage crop establishment, propagation, cultivation, pruning, training, harvesting, and post-harvest activities.
- Select suitable plant varieties, cultivars, rootstocks, growing systems, and production methods.
- Manage nurseries, greenhouses, orchards, protected-cropping facilities, or open-field horticultural operations as applicable.
- Monitor plant growth, crop development, yield potential, quality, and maturity.
- Develop irrigation programs based on crop requirements, soil conditions, weather, and production systems.
- Monitor soil moisture, drainage, irrigation efficiency, and water consumption.
- Manage fertilization, fertigation, nutrient programs, and soil-improvement activities.
- Conduct regular crop scouting to identify pests, diseases, nutrient deficiencies, weeds, and environmental stress.
- Implement integrated pest and disease-management programs.
- Ensure responsible and compliant use of fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators, and other agricultural inputs.
- Manage plant propagation, seedling production, grafting, cutting, transplanting, and plant establishment where applicable.
- Establish crop-quality standards covering appearance, size, maturity, consistency, health, and market specifications.
- Coordinate harvesting, grading, packing, storage, and delivery activities.
- Minimize crop damage, waste, post-harvest losses, and product rejection.
- Manage growing media, soil amendments, substrates, containers, seeds, seedlings, fertilizers, and crop-protection materials.
- Maintain accurate records of crop inputs, treatments, production, yield, quality, and field activities.
- Manage horticultural machinery, irrigation systems, greenhouse equipment, climate-control systems, tools, and field infrastructure.
- Establish preventive-maintenance programs to improve equipment reliability and operational continuity.
- Manage horticultural staff, growers, supervisors, technicians, seasonal workers, contractors, and service providers.
- Prepare workforce schedules, productivity targets, training plans, and performance standards.
- Train employees in plant handling, crop-care practices, chemical safety, equipment operation, hygiene, and workplace safety.
- Manage horticultural budgets, labor costs, input expenses, maintenance costs, and capital requirements.
- Forecast requirements for seeds, plants, fertilizers, pesticides, growing media, equipment, packaging, and other supplies.
- Manage procurement and evaluate supplier quality, availability, pricing, and service performance.
- Monitor weather, environmental conditions, and crop risks and develop appropriate contingency plans.
- Manage greenhouse climate, ventilation, humidity, temperature, lighting, shading, and environmental controls where applicable.
- Use precision-horticulture technologies such as sensors, automation, GIS, drones, remote monitoring, and crop-management systems.
- Analyze crop and operational data to identify productivity gaps, cost drivers, and improvement opportunities.
- Coordinate trials and evaluations of new varieties, growing techniques, technologies, inputs, and production systems.
- Work with agronomists, plant pathologists, entomologists, irrigation specialists, laboratories, suppliers, and research organizations.
- Ensure compliance with agricultural, environmental, food-safety, chemical-handling, labor, and workplace requirements.
- Implement sustainable practices involving water conservation, soil health, nutrient efficiency, integrated pest management, and waste reduction.
- Support biodiversity, pollinator protection, habitat management, and responsible land-use initiatives where applicable.
- Prepare regular reports covering production, yield, quality, crop health, labor, inputs, costs, risks, and sustainability.
- Investigate production problems and implement corrective and preventive actions.
- Identify opportunities to improve productivity, product quality, resource efficiency, automation, and profitability.
- Lead continuous-improvement programs across horticultural operations.
Key Performance Indicators
- Crop yield per hectare or production area.
- Total production volume.
- Plant survival and establishment rate.
- Crop quality and marketable yield.
- Product rejection and downgrade rate.
- Crop-loss and post-harvest loss rates.
- Water-use efficiency.
- Fertilizer and nutrient-use efficiency.
- Pest and disease incidence.
- Crop-protection effectiveness.
- Soil and growing-media health.
- Labor productivity.
- Equipment and facility uptime.
- Input inventory accuracy.
- Input cost per production unit.
- Production cost per unit.
- Harvest schedule adherence.
- Supplier performance.
- Worker safety performance.
- Environmental compliance.
- Waste-reduction performance.
- Budget adherence.
- Forecast accuracy.
- Trial and innovation performance.
- Regulatory compliance.
- Customer satisfaction.
- Continuous-improvement savings and productivity gains.
Ideal Candidate
The successful candidate should have substantial experience in horticulture, commercial crop production, nursery management, greenhouse operations, floriculture, fruit and vegetable production, landscape horticulture, agronomy, or a related field.
The candidate should demonstrate:
- Strong knowledge of horticultural production and plant-management practices.
- Understanding of plant physiology, crop nutrition, soil management, irrigation, and plant health.
- Experience managing greenhouse, nursery, orchard, protected-cropping, or open-field operations.
- Knowledge of integrated pest and disease management.
- Experience managing propagation, planting, cultivation, harvesting, and post-harvest activities.
- Strong workforce leadership and contractor-management capabilities.
- Experience managing horticultural budgets, procurement, suppliers, and operating costs.
- Ability to analyze production, crop-health, quality, and financial data.
- Familiarity with precision agriculture, controlled-environment agriculture, automation, sensors, or digital farm-management systems.
- Strong understanding of chemical safety, food safety, environmental management, and agricultural compliance.
- Excellent planning, organization, communication, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to manage seasonal production demands and operational emergencies.
- Strong attention to plant quality, operational detail, and resource efficiency.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
- A practical, commercially aware, sustainability-focused, and continuous-improvement mindset.