Director, Environmental Health & Safety

CACI•Rochester, NY

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Executive Director, Manufacturing Environmental Health & Safety is the enterprise-level executive accountable for safety and environmental performance exclusively across the organization's manufacturing sites. This role owns the strategy, governance, and leadership engagement model required to drive a world-class safety culture, one where site and manufacturing leadership visibly own safety outcomes, not just the EHS function. This leader is measured on moving the manufacturing network toward world-class safety performance (TRIR, LTIR, severity rate, and leading-indicator engagement metrics) through disciplined management systems, rigorous incident investigation and prevention, and a leadership engagement cadence that puts plant managers, operations leaders, and front-line supervisors at the center of the safety culture — not on the sidelines of it. This is a highly visible, enterprise-scope executive role for a safety leader who believes world-class safety performance is built through leadership behavior, not paperwork. The successful candidate will combine deep EHS technical expertise with the ability to influence operations leaders and personally engage when the manufacturing network needs it most.

Requirements

Minimum of 12 years related experience to include 10 years (minimum) of progressive EHS leadership experience within manufacturing operations, including five (5) years in the aerospace and defense industry or a comparably regulated, safety-critical manufacturing environment.
Demonstrated track record of measurably improving safety KPIs across a multi-site manufacturing network, with clear before/after results.
Proven experience designing and leading a leadership engagement model that changed how plant managers and front-line supervisors personally own safety — not just an EHS program run in parallel to operations.
Deep working knowledge of OSHA, EPA, and applicable state EHS regulatory frameworks as they apply to manufacturing operations; experience with ISO 45001 and/or ISO 14001 management systems.
Experience leading serious incident investigation and corrective action processes, including direct engagement with regulators as needed.
Bachelor's degree in Occupational Safety, Industrial Hygiene, Environmental Science, Engineering, or related field; CSP, CIH, or equivalent professional certification strongly preferred.
Demonstrated ability to lead through urgency — comfortable personally engaging on the floor or at a site during a serious safety event, not solely directing from a distance.

Nice To Haves

Experience building or scaling behavior-based safety (BBS) programs across a multi-site manufacturing network.
Familiarity with AS9100/NADCAP-governed manufacturing environments and how safety standard work integrates with quality and production standard work.
Experience benchmarking manufacturing EHS organization design and staffing models against industry peers.
Advanced degree (MS in Occupational Safety/Industrial Hygiene, MBA, or related)

Responsibilities

Design and lead an enterprise leadership engagement model that puts plant managers, operations directors, and front-line supervisors visibly and personally in the safety loop — structured safety walks, leader-led toolbox talks, gemba/floor engagement, and visible accountability for site safety performance.
Build the behavior-based safety programs and observation systems needed to shift the culture from compliance-driven to ownership-driven at every level of the manufacturing organization.
Coach and hold site leadership accountable for safety leadership behaviors, using engagement and perception survey data alongside lagging metrics to gauge culture maturity site by site.
Champion recognition and escalation mechanisms that reinforce safe behavior and rapidly surface at-risk conditions before they become incidents.
Own the enterprise EHS management system across all manufacturing sites, ensuring consistent policy, standard work, and governance cadence regardless of site size or maturity.
Establish a maturity model and site assessment/audit methodology for manufacturing EHS, benchmarking sites against internal targets and external world-class safety standards.
Ensure the management system aligns with and supports certification to recognized standards (e.g., ISO 45001, ISO 14001) and applicable OSHA/EPA and state regulatory frameworks, where applicable.
Partner with Manufacturing Excellence and Site Manufacturing leadership so safety standard work is embedded directly into production standard work, not layered on as a separate system.
Drive proactive hazard identification and risk reduction across manufacturing processes, equipment, and facilities, prioritizing engineering controls ahead of administrative controls or PPE.
Own environmental compliance for manufacturing operations, including permitting, waste management, emissions, and environmental reporting obligations tied to production processes.
Ensure industrial hygiene programs (exposure monitoring, ergonomics, noise, chemical safety) meet or exceed regulatory requirements across all manufacturing sites.
Maintain audit-readiness and lead the organization's response to regulatory inspections (OSHA, EPA, and state-level authorities) at manufacturing locations.
Own the manufacturing EHS site- and enterprise-level scorecard reporting, trends and improvement activities.
Report safety performance, culture maturity, and improvement roadmaps to executive leadership and the Board, with clear accountability tied to each manufacturing site.
Serve as the senior escalation point for serious injuries, environmental releases, or high-potential near-misses at any manufacturing site, personally engaging on critical events.
Lead or oversee root cause investigation (e.g., 5-Why, fault tree methodologies) for significant incidents, ensuring disciplined corrective action closure and enterprise-wide sharing of lessons learned.
Ensure a consistent, rigorous incident classification and reporting standard is applied across all sites so performance data is comparable and trustworthy.
Build and lead a high-performing manufacturing EHS organization, including site-level EHS leaders, industrial hygienists, safety engineers, and environmental compliance specialists.
Develop the technical and coaching capability of the EHS team so they function as trusted advisors and culture-builders to site leadership, not solely as compliance monitors.
Partner with HR and Manufacturing Excellence to embed safety leadership expectations into leader onboarding, performance management, and succession planning for manufacturing leadership roles.