Senior Health & Safety Specialist

We're Hiring: Senior Health & Safety Specialist
Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: Senior
Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About Us
We are a globally focused organization committed to protecting people, assets, operations, and communities through strong health, safety, risk-management, and operational standards across diverse markets. Our teams collaborate across Operations, Engineering, Human Resources, Facilities, Security, Compliance, Risk, Procurement, and external partners to create safe and responsible working environments.
Our Health & Safety function supports the organization through proactive risk identification, regulatory compliance, incident prevention, employee awareness, emergency preparedness, workplace inspections, and continuous improvement of health and safety performance.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Senior Health & Safety Specialist to support the development, implementation, monitoring, and continuous improvement of occupational health and safety programs across the organization.
The ideal candidate will combine strong technical health and safety knowledge with practical risk-management capabilities, analytical skills, and excellent communication. The role will involve identifying workplace hazards, conducting risk assessments, monitoring compliance, investigating incidents, developing safety programs, delivering training, and partnering with operational teams to strengthen the organization's safety culture.
Key Responsibilities
Develop, implement, and maintain comprehensive occupational health and safety policies, standards, procedures, and programs.
Support the organization's health and safety strategy in alignment with business objectives and applicable requirements.
Conduct workplace health and safety risk assessments across operational, office, project, facility, and field environments.
Identify hazards associated with equipment, machinery, materials, work activities, workplace conditions, and human factors.
Evaluate existing risk controls and recommend additional preventive and protective measures.
Develop and maintain risk registers, hazard inventories, safety action plans, and control documentation.
Conduct regular workplace inspections, safety observations, compliance reviews, and behavioral-safety assessments.
Identify unsafe conditions, unsafe acts, environmental hazards, and potential sources of injury or occupational illness.
Develop corrective and preventive actions and monitor them through effective closure.
Investigate workplace incidents, accidents, injuries, near misses, property damage, and other safety events.
Lead or support root-cause analysis for significant incidents and recurring safety issues.
Prepare incident investigation reports with clear findings, contributing factors, and corrective actions.
Track incident trends and identify opportunities for proactive risk reduction.
Maintain accurate records of incidents, inspections, risk assessments, training, corrective actions, and safety performance.
Monitor compliance with applicable occupational health and safety laws, regulations, standards, codes, and organizational requirements.
Interpret regulatory and industry developments and assess their potential impact on operations.
Support regulatory inspections, client audits, certification audits, insurance reviews, and external safety assessments.
Develop internal safety audit programs and conduct periodic compliance audits.
Monitor audit findings and coordinate corrective actions with responsible stakeholders.
Establish and maintain safety procedures for high-risk activities and hazardous work.
Support permit-to-work systems, lockout/tagout, confined-space entry, work-at-height, hot-work, lifting, excavation, and other critical-risk activities where applicable.
Review job safety analyses, risk assessments, method statements, and safe work procedures.
Provide health and safety guidance during operational planning, project execution, facility changes, and new activity introductions.
Participate in management-of-change processes to identify safety implications of organizational, process, equipment, or technology changes.
Review contractor and supplier health and safety requirements before and during service delivery.
Conduct contractor safety assessments, onboarding reviews, inspections, and performance monitoring.
Establish contractor safety expectations, documentation requirements, and performance standards.
Coordinate with Procurement and Operations to incorporate safety requirements into supplier and contractor agreements.
Develop and deliver health and safety training, awareness sessions, toolbox talks, and safety briefings.
Develop training materials covering hazard awareness, emergency response, safe work practices, incident prevention, and regulatory requirements.
Maintain safety competency and training records and monitor completion against established requirements.
Provide targeted coaching to employees and managers following incidents, observations, audits, or identified risk exposures.
Promote employee participation in hazard identification, near-miss reporting, safety observations, and continuous-improvement initiatives.
Develop and maintain emergency preparedness and response procedures.
Coordinate emergency drills covering fire, evacuation, medical emergencies, spills, security incidents, and other relevant scenarios.
Review emergency plans, evacuation arrangements, emergency equipment, assembly points, and communication procedures.
Coordinate with Facilities, Security, Operations, and relevant emergency-response providers on preparedness activities.
Support occupational health programs and workplace health initiatives where applicable.
Monitor workplace conditions affecting employee health, including ergonomics, noise, lighting, temperature, air quality, chemical exposure, and other occupational hazards.
Support ergonomic assessments and recommend improvements to workstations, equipment, and work practices.
Coordinate with occupational health providers and relevant specialists when health risks require technical assessment.
Review safety implications of chemicals, hazardous substances, equipment, machinery, and stored materials.
Maintain appropriate safety data sheets, chemical inventories, labeling requirements, and hazardous-material controls where applicable.
Monitor the availability, suitability, inspection, and use of personal protective equipment.
Establish PPE requirements based on identified hazards and applicable standards.
Analyze safety performance data and develop dashboards and management reports.
Track leading and lagging health and safety indicators and identify emerging risk trends.
Key Performance Indicators
Total recordable incident rate
Lost-time injury frequency rate
Lost-time injury severity rate
Occupational injury rate
Near-miss reporting rate
Safety observation rate
High-risk hazard identification rate
Preventive-action completion rate
Corrective-action closure rate
Overdue corrective actions
Repeat incident rate
Incident investigation completion
Root-cause analysis quality
Incident-reporting timeliness
Workplace inspection completion
Safety audit completion
Safety audit finding closure
Regulatory compliance rate
Regulatory inspection performance
Contractor safety compliance
Contractor incident rate
Permit-to-work compliance
Critical-risk control compliance
PPE compliance
Safety training completion
Safety competency assessment results
Emergency-drill completion
Emergency-response performance
Risk-assessment completion
Risk-control implementation
Safety policy compliance
Hazard-reporting participation
Safety campaign participation
Employee safety engagement
Safety communication effectiveness
Occupational health program completion
Ergonomic assessment completion
Safety documentation accuracy
Safety reporting timeliness
Safety-system audit results
Safety-related operational downtime
Insurance and claims performance
Safety improvement initiative completion
Safety technology adoption
Overall reduction in preventable incidents and injuries
Ideal Candidate
The successful candidate should have strong experience in occupational health and safety, workplace safety, EHS, HSE, industrial safety, construction safety, facilities safety, operational risk, or safety management, preferably within a complex, high-risk, geographically distributed, or international organization.
The candidate should demonstrate:
Proven experience developing and implementing health and safety programs.
Strong knowledge of occupational health and safety principles, hazard identification, and risk assessment.
Experience conducting workplace inspections, safety audits, and compliance assessments.
Strong incident investigation and root-cause analysis capabilities.
Experience developing corrective and preventive action plans.
Strong understanding of applicable health and safety legislation, regulations, standards, and industry practices.

Work arrangement
Yes