Head Of Chemical Regulatory Services

Role: Head of Chemical Regulatory Services

Location: UK (London, Oxford, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol etc.) Flexible / Hybrid

Role ID: 2024-2214

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.

Ricardo have a very successful Chemical Regulatory and safety business area and we are looking for a technically and commercially competent leader for the regulatory technical areas. This group provides a range of regulatory compliance services to companies across the world, primarily addressing the UK and European regulatory regime but with global touch-points, including REACH, CLP / GHS. Services include SDS authoring and review, mixture notifications, software as well as hazard and risk assessment consultancy with our world leading expertise in environmental persistence of Chemicals. We also work closely with our Policy team and have secured work relating to emerging and current regulation and policy for the EU and the UK, including delivering the landmark impact assessment on the EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) for Cefic.

We need you to be a proven leader in Chemical Regulatory compliance consultancy to run and operate as the Head of the business area. This will include expanding our regulatory consultancy offerings, capitalise on excellent growth and new market opportunities, and cross-Ricardo collaboration. You must have superb people leadership skills to support the growth and development of our people, as well as providing technical and commercial leadership. You must have proven expertise in regulatory consultancy in a related field, be an expert communicator, understand the commercial opportunities and challenges and be a fantastic collaborator (both internally and externally), with strong customer project/relationship management skills.

We are looking for someone who is passionate about leading a team of high performers to significant growth, whilst addressing some of the most challenging problems within this space.

Key accountabilities:

The Head of Chemical Regulatory Consultancy will be responsible for:

* Provide guidance and strategic direction to the team to ensure a high quality and customer focused delivery for the Business Area and that this meets agreed targets for revenue, orders and profit in the short term, and developing a strategic plan to grow this significantly in the medium term.
* Identifying growth opportunities, new consultancy and product offerings, and potential industry challenges based on market conditions, legislative change and customer demands.
* Driving the future development of the function and the chemical risk teams as a whole.
* Working closely with the Ricardo leadership team to contribute to and achieve the growth plans and Chemical Risk Strategy.
* Leading the Chemical Regulatory Consultancy team and team leaders, currently around 22 people, driving the growth and the development of the team. Focusing on our meta themes (clarity, genuine concern, playing people in position and praise) alongside Ricardo’s values (be mindful, create together, aim high and be innovative).
* Providing leadership of project staff related to customers / consultants working on technical projects as Project Director (managing the quality, accuracy and timeliness of deliverables) where of strategic importance.
* Liaising with marketing and sales staff to ensure the effective promotion of Ricardo’s capabilities in support of sales activities to grow these areas and designing effective marketing strategy with relevant commercial teams.
* Supporting client relationships and the account management team by joining strategic customer discussions and identifying new areas of opportunity with the client.
* Collaborating and identifying strategic opportunities and new products and services with other Ricardo business area including in our Chemicals Policy team, Product Sustainability, Agriculture and Water businesses on a global basis.
* Keep up to date with market trends and developments and provide technical support to colleagues in the development of new service offerings and creation of technical papers.

Essential technical and professional skills, knowledge and qualification:

* Experienced in leading the development and implementation of a business strategy with respect to Chemical Regulatory consultancy.
* Lead projects and teams within a commercial consultancy environment, particularly related to providing a service to third party customers.
* A skilled influencer and leader who enables the team to successfully deliver regulatory consultancy projects and supports the personal development of the team.
* Ability to think strategically and multi-year, and to be able to define and implement a commercial strategy to significantly grow the business and respond to a rapidly changing regulatory environment.
* Performing and managing high quality technical consultancy in the field of Chemical Regulatory affairs and an effective delegator of work.
* Be an excellent communicator and used to presenting your ideas and project outputs to customers and at regulatory conferences, at events or through webinars, blogs etc.

Desirable technical and professional skills, knowledge and qualification:

* Providing knowledge (and existing relationships) in the UK and European Chemical Regulatory landscape, in particular REACH, CLP / GHS (including technical detail around SDS authoring, PC notification, etc.) and emerging regulations is strongly desirable, but we will entertain applications from those with relevant experience in adjacent fields.
* The ability to apply relevant technical knowledge to contribute to delivery at the project director level (for key clients) and be the technical leader across the business area.
* Bring your own network of contacts from customers and stakeholder organisations.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Next Steps

If our application process does not align with your requirements, please email and we will make necessary arrangements to meet your needs.

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.