Environmental Health and Safety Lead

About the Company

We are a renewable energy and ocean technology company committed to rapidly developing and deploying technologies that will ensure a sustainable future for Earth by unlocking the vast energy potential of its oceans. Our focus is on capturing civilizational levels of ultra-low-cost renewable energy for applications including computing and affordable renewable fuels delivered to shore.

The company is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Portland, Oregon and backed by leading venture capitalists, philanthropic investors, university endowments, and private investment offices. We operate as an idea meritocracy in which the best ideas change the company’s direction on a regular basis.

About the Job

Our core technology is the node, a device that produces energy in the ocean’s harshest conditions for years at a time without human maintenance or intervention.

We are seeking an Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) Lead to build and scale a proactive, consistent safety program across labs, fabrication spaces, marine operations, pilot manufacturing, and field environments. This role is not just about expertise—it’s about partnership. You will work side-by-side with engineers, technicians, and operators to identify risks early, develop practical solutions, and embed safety directly into how work gets designed and done.

This is a unique opportunity to design safety systems from the ground up in a fast-moving engineering environment. The EHS Lead will champion our Safety Principles, integrate safety into engineering and design processes, and help teams solve real problems—balancing rigor with pragmatism so safety enables progress rather than slowing it down.

We’re looking for someone who thrives in a startup culture, prefers practical, lightweight processes over bureaucracy, and approaches safety as a collaborative, solutions-oriented discipline. At Panthalassa, safety is an enabler, not a gate, and this role is central to making that real.

Our staff have worked at organizations such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Tesla, Apple, Virgin Orbit, Astra, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, New Relic, Bridgewater, Raytheon, Disney Imagineering, and the US Army and Air Force, as well as research universities, startups, and small companies across a range of industries. We are organized as a public benefit corporation and are backed by leading venture capital firms, private investors, philanthropic investors, and endowments.

Responsibilities

• Lead the rollout and adoption of Panthalassa’s Safety Principles, making them visible, tangible, and actionable across labs, shops, docks, and test environments.
• Build a simple, transparent safety management system to track inspections, near misses, and incidents; ensure clear ownership and accountability for timely review  and implementation of resulting corrective actions. 
• Create a structured training framework that prepares teams for safe work in all environments including: fabrication, marine operations, electrical work, lab environments, and pilot manufacturing.
• Integrate safety into design and engineering by leading safety reviews during design phases, construction, equipment installation, and process development.
• Participate in engineering design reviews, design the set of assessment criteria that are appropriate for each phase of engineering development efforts.
• Provide timely, practical safety guidance to teams, approaching safety as a service and partnership, and rapidly developing solutions to mitigate emergent or unplanned hazards without unnecessary disruption to work.
• Deliver safety advice and support with a customer-service mindset—responsive, pragmatic, and solutions-focused—helping teams address hazards and unblock work safely.
• Develop clear, consistent communication channels for sharing safety information, lessons learned, and relevant marine and industrial standards.
• Own safety preparedness, including emergency response planning and drills, and partnerships with external training providers.
• Build practical, lightweight EHS policies and roles that can grow with us—from our current domestic operations to future sites and activities as we expand internationally.
• Lead incident investigations and drive practical, long-term corrective and preventive actions.
• Serve as a trusted partner to Engineering, Workplace Design & Operations, Manufacturing, Marine Ops, and Testing to ensure safety decisions are engineering-informed and operationally grounded.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years experience in Environmental Health & Safety roles supporting engineering, R&D, industrial, fabrication, or manufacturing environments.
• Demonstrated ability to build or scale a safety pro