Director of Health and Safety Business Operations & England, United Kingdom

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At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more .org.

We are seeking an experienced Director of Health & Safety who will lead the continued development, implementation, and continuous improvement of EIT’s health, safety, and laboratory compliance strategy. The role requires a pragmatic, risk-based approach to health and safety that balances the risks and rewards inherent in advanced scientific research, applying industry-leading standards and professional judgement rather than purely prescriptive approaches.

This role provides expertise, governance, and oversight across all operations, with a particular focus on laboratory-based operations, as well as supporting wider site activities. The postholder will work with scientists and operational teams across EIT to ensure that all laboratory and technical environments operate in robust compliance with UK legislation, guided by risk-based professional judgement, while driving a strong safety culture with a focus on continuous improvement and excellence.

• Own the organisational health and safety strategy, ensuring it supports EIT’s scientific, operational and growth objectives, with particular focus on complex laboratory based and regulated environments.
• Define and oversee the organisation’s health and safety governance framework, including policies, standards and accountabilities, ensuring alignment with UK legislation and industry-leading and emerging best practice (e.g. HSE, COSHH, MHRA, COMAH).
• Develop excellent working relationships with research teams to utilise their expertise and experience to develop fit for purpose policies and procedures which appropriately govern laboratory research from a health & safety perspective.
• Set the organisation wide approach to health and safety risk management, overseeing frameworks for risk assessment, audit, inspection and incident investigation, and ensuring systemic risks are identified, prioritised and mitigated.
• Work with research teams to find solutions that demonstrate sensitivity to their primary objectives.
• Provide executive assurance of regulatory compliance while applying risk-based, industry-leading approaches that enable innovative research and translation without unnecessary constraint. Ensuring the organisation consistently meets its obligations under all relevant health, safety and biosafety legislation and applicable GxP requirements whilst maintaining a flexible approach that adapts as research priorities evolve.
• Act as the organisation’s senior authority and subject-matter expert in safety, biosafety and chemical risk management, providing independent, expert advice to the Scientific Management Committee and Senior Leadership Team.
• Ensure the organisation maintains robust, future-proofed systems for the control of biological, chemical, radiological, ergonomic and physical hazards, appropriate to the scale and complexity of laboratory operations.
• Champion a strong safety culture at leadership, influencing senior stakeholders to drive accountability, visible leadership and continuous improvement in health and safety performance.
• Work in close partnership with the Head of Environmental, Health & Safety and research teams to align Quality, Facilities and Scientific Operations with the direction for operational delivery, ensuring health and safety principles are consistently embedded across all…