Director R&D EHS Program Lead

About this role

ROLE SUMMARY The Director, R&D EHS Program Lead serves as the GWE R&D principal leader in industrial hygiene and the broader Environmental, Health & Safety (EH&S) disciplines as it pertains to the support of research operations. Reporting to the Sr. Director, R&D and Capital Strategy Lead this role enables industrial-hygiene expertise. Anchored in this technical authority, this role leads and moderates a global EH&S Community of Practice (CoP), serves as R&D’s lead voice to the enterprise EH&S organization, and establishes the above-site reporting and metrics that give leadership a single, portfolio-wide view of R&D EH&S performance. Influencing and aligning senior stakeholders across GWE, Research and the enterprise Safety, Environmental & Operations (SEO) function, this role delivers Director-level impact principally through expertise and leadership of a community of EH&S professionals.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES • Principal industrial-hygiene authority: serve as the technical subject matter leader for GWE R&D, leading the anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control of chemical, physical and biological exposure hazards across all sites.

• R&D Leadership Team membership: serve as an active member of the GWE R&D Leadership Team and an extended member of the Safety & Environmental Operations Leadership Team, driving transformative action to reduce EH&S risk and elevate performance consistently across the organization.

• Exposure-assessment program: design and govern qualitative and quantitative exposure-assessment programs — air, surface and personal monitoring, sampling strategies, and interpretation against occupational exposure limits (OELs) and occupational exposure bands (OEBs).

• Potent-compound & hazard control: lead hazard and control banding for potent compounds, high-hazard biologics/ADCs and novel molecules, defining containment strategies, engineering controls and PPE for the highest-hazard work.

• Engineering controls & containment verification: provide technical oversight of ventilation, fume hoods, isolators and containment systems, including performance verification and industrial-hygiene sign-off for laboratory and pilot operations.

• Risk Assessment expertise: support and implement industrial-hygiene risk-assessment methodologies in partnership with SEO and global policy and procedures, establishing one consistent toolset and documentation standard applied across all R&D sites.

• Laboratory Safety Program: Ensure consistent application of lab safety programs, developing a consistent GWE-wide approach for each laboratory environment, differentiating between analytical, chemistry, biological, etc., laboratories.

• Community of Practice leadership: lead and manage a global R&D EH&S Community of Practice of 10–12 discipline experts (industrial hygiene, biological safety & containment, process/contractor safety, and EH&S management systems); set priorities and deliverables and drive consistent, outcome-focused standards, tools and best practices.

• Enterprise EH&S liaison & governance: serve as GWE R&D’s representation in the enterprise programs, shaping enterprise policies, standards, reporting and tools — with particular focus on industrial-hygiene standards — so they are fit-for-purpose for R&D, and securing governance and decision rights on R&D’s behalf.

• EH&S governance & risk registers: lead and sustain site-level EH&S risk registers, rolling up location-based input into a network-wide, forward-looking view of the state of control; establish action plans in response to emerging trends and risk signals, escalating as needed to secure alignment and accelerate resolution.

• Science-line partnership & risk enablement: advise senior scientific and operational leaders on practical, IH-based solutions, exercising independent judgment to balance exposure risk with business needs and aligning stakeholders across Workplace Experience, Research and site operations.

• Performance reporting & metrics: establish and deliver portfolio-level visibility of EH&S and industrial-hygiene performance — exposure trends and leading/lagging indicators — informing executive decisions and driving continuous improvement.

• AI Implementation: Explore opportunities for AI to assist with EHS processes, risk assessments, change control, and metrics, and implement GWE-wide solutions.

• Incident investigation & lessons learned: manage the escalation process for significant EH&S events or compliance issues, lead root-cause investigations, and communicate lessons learned to drive improvement across the R&D network.

• Enterprise representation — vendor program & BD/M&A: represent Global Workplace Experience/R&D as decision partner for EH&S service and vendor programs (e.g., IH monitoring services, waste management) in support of enterprise procurement savings; lead EH&S/IH due diligence for business development and M&A activity to anticipate exposure gaps and remediation needs before they impact R&D.

• Talent & capability development: leverage the Community of Practice to assess and strengthen industrial-hygiene and EH&S bench strength, enabling succession planning and creating growth and development opportunities.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS • Bachelor’s degree in industrial/occupational hygiene, environmental/occupational health, chemistry, engineering, or a closely related scientific discipline.

• 10+ years of progressive industrial-hygiene and EH&S experience in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, or another life sciences/high-hazard, regulated environment.

• Deep, demonstrable expertise in industrial hygiene — exposure assessment, monitoring and sampling, OELs/OEBs, hazard/control banding, and engineering-control evaluation — in laboratory and R&D settings.

• Demonstrated Director-level (or equivalent senior) EH&S leadership, including owning or influencing standards, programs, or communities of practice across multiple sites at an above-site or enterprise level.

• Proven ab

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