Ehs Engineer

An EHS Engineer (Environment, Health and Safety — sometimes written HSE or SHE) makes sure that industrial sites, factories, labs, construction projects and offices operate without hurting people or breaching environmental law. They inspect work areas, investigate accidents and near-misses, write and test safety procedures, and advise engineers and managers on how to design risk out of a process or piece of equipment. They work for manufacturers, pharmaceutical and chemical companies, energy and utilities firms, construction and engineering contractors, and increasingly for large logistics and data-centre operators.

Starting salary: £27k–£35k
Live graduate jobs: Search all jobs
Main way in: Graduate schemes at large manufacturers, pharmaceutical and…
They usually ask for: A degree is normal but the subject varies a lot

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £27,000–£35,000 to start, though this varies widely by employer, sector and location — heavy industry, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals and high-hazard sites tend to pay at or above the top of that range, while smaller manufacturers, charities and public sector roles sit lower. Shift, on-call or remote-site allowances can add meaningfully on top.

What you'd actually do

Walking the shop floor, site or lab — looking at how people are actually working rather than how the procedure says they should, and talking to operators and supervisors about what gets in the way of doing it safely
Writing or reviewing risk assessments and method statements for specific tasks: what could go wrong with this machine, this chemical, this lift, this confined space, and what controls reduce the risk
Investigating incidents and near-misses — interviewing those involved, establishing the sequence of events, identifying root causes rather than blaming individuals, and tracking the corrective actions to completion
Sitting in on design and project meetings to flag safety and environmental issues early, e.g. machine guarding, noise, fume extraction, emissions, waste streams or the safety implications of a new piece of equipment being installed

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Collecting and reporting data — incident rates, inspection findings, waste and emissions figures, energy use — for internal management reviews and for regulatory or corporate reporting
Delivering toolbox talks, inductions and short training sessions to staff and contractors, and checking contractors' own safety documentation before they start work on site
Preparing for and supporting audits and inspections, whether internal, customer-led, certification bodies for standards like ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety) and ISO 14001 (environmental management), or visits from the Health and Safety Executive or Environment Agency

How graduates get in

Graduate schemes at large manufacturers, pharmaceutical and chemical companies, utilities, aerospace and automotive firms — some run a dedicated EHS/SHE stream, others rotate graduate engineers through an EHS placement. This is a common route but there are far fewer dedicated EHS graduate schemes than general engineering ones.
Direct entry as an EHS Engineer, EHS Advisor, EHS Coordinator or Graduate Safety Advisor at a single site. Very common — many employers hire one or two people straight into a site team rather than running a scheme.
Moving sideways from a production, process or maintenance engineering role after a year or two on site. Also very common, and often the strongest route because you already understand the plant and the people.
Entry via a specialist degree in occupational safety and health, environmental health, environmental science or environmental management — these are well-regarded but by no means required.

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Construction and infrastructure contractors hire graduates into site-based health, safety and environment roles, often after a placement year or site experience. Expect more time outdoors and more contractor management than in a factory role.
Via a consultancy — EHS, environmental or risk consultancies take graduates and send them out to client sites to do audits, assessments and compliance work. Broader exposure, less depth on any one site.

What employers ask for

A degree is normal but the subject varies a lot. Engineering (chemical, mechanical, manufacturing, civil), environmental science, occupational health and safety, chemistry and applied science degrees are all common. For roles attached to complex plant or process risk, an engineering or science background matters; for general compliance and advisory roles it matters much less.
A 2:1 is the typical bar at large employers running formal schemes; many site-based direct-entry roles will take a 2:2 plus relevant placement or industrial experience.
The NEBOSH General Certificate (National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health) is the standard baseline qualification. Some employers want it before you apply; many will pay for you to take it in your first year. The NEBOSH Diploma is the bigger qualification taken later.
Membership of IOSH (Institution of Occupational Safety and Health) is the professional body route — you typically start as a Technical Member (TechIOSH) and work towards Graduate Member and then Chartered (CMIOSH). For the environmental side, IEMA (Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment) plays the same role.

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Any hands-on exposure to an operating site — a placement year, a summer in a factory, warehouse or lab, even a non-graduate shift job — carries real weight, because credibility with operators is a large part of the job.
A full driving licence is frequently required, especially in consultancy, construction and multi-site roles.

Skills that matter

Reading a process or piece of equipment and spotting what could go wrong

The core technical task is hazard identification — seeing that the guard can be defeated, the extraction is undersized, or the bund won't hold a full tank's contents.

Influencing people who don't report to you

You almost never have authority to stop production or force a change; you have to persuade shift managers and engineers that your fix is worth the downtime.

Root cause analysis techniques (5 Whys, fishbone diagrams, bowtie analysis)

Incident investigations are judged on whether you got past 'operator didn't follow the procedure' to why the procedure failed.

Reading and applying regulation and standards

Much of the job is translating documents like COSHH, LOLER, PUWER, environmental permits and ISO standards into something a shift team can actually do.

Clear, concise written English

Risk assessments, procedures and investigation reports are read by operators under time pressure and, occasionally, by regulators or lawyers — ambiguity is a genuine hazard.

Data handling and basic analysis

You'll be tracking incident, inspection, waste and emissions data and expected to show whether trends are real or noise.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

First one to three years: EHS Engineer or Advisor on a single site, usually owning a specific area or topic (a production line, contractor management, waste, or a particular standard) while completing NEBOSH and starting IOSH membership.
Senior EHS Engineer or Site EHS Manager: owning the whole site's safety and environmental performance, managing the system that gets audited, and often supervising one or two junior staff. Timescales vary widely — three to six years is typical but it depends heavily on company size and turnover.
Regional, multi-site or group EHS Manager, or a specialist path: process safety (major accident hazards and COMAH sites), environmental compliance and permitting, sustainability and carbon reporting, or occupational hygiene. Specialists often out-earn generalists.
Head of EHS, HSE Director or Head of Sustainability at company level, usually requiring Chartered status (CMIOSH) or Chartered Environmentalist, plus a track record of changing culture rather than just managing paperwork.
Alternative directions are common and not a step down: moving into EHS consultancy, into operations or plant management (EHS experience is useful preparation), into insurance and risk engineering, or into a regulator such as the Health and Safety Executive or Environment Agency.

What people get wrong

“It's the 'health and safety' job — clipboards, hi-vis and telling people off about ladders.”

At the engineering end it's genuinely technical: machine safeguarding standards, ventilation and extraction design, chemical reactivity, fire and explosion risk, emissions modelling. The clipboard parts exist, but the people who progress are the ones who can argue engineering detail with design engineers.

“Your job is to say no and stop unsafe work.”

Saying no is the easy, low-value answer and it gets you ignored. Most of the job is finding the version of the task that gets done safely, on time, within the constraints the business actually has — you're a problem-solver sitting inside an operations team, not an internal police force.

“The 'E' is a minor add-on to health and safety.”

The environmental half is growing fast and is often the harder, more technical part — permits, waste classification, emissions and discharge limits, carbon and energy reporting. Many EHS people end up specialising on that side, and it connects directly into sustainability careers.

“You need a safety-specific degree to get in.”

Most EHS engineers came from a general engineering or science degree and picked up NEBOSH and IOSH afterwards. Employers tend to care more about whether you understand how a plant works and whether operators will listen to you.

Where this varies

The job looks quite different depending on where you do it. On a high-hazard process site (chemicals, oil and gas, COMAH-regulated plants) the work is dominated by process safety — formal hazard studies, barrier analysis, permits to work — and is deeply technical. In general manufacturing and warehousing it leans towards machinery safety, manual handling, traffic management and behavioural safety. In construction it is site-based, weather-exposed, heavily focused on controlling subcontractors, and the CDM (Construction Design and Management) Regulations shape everything. In consultancy you travel between client sites doing audits and assessments, with far less of the long-term culture-change work. Job titles are used inconsistently too: EHS, HSE, SHE, SHEQ (adding Quality) and HSEQ often describe the same job, and 'Engineer', 'Advisor', 'Coordinator' and 'Officer' do not map to a consistent seniority ladder across employers — read the advert rather than the title.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.