Location: Homebased, based in the Southern Area

Contract: Full time, permanent

Salary: £32,000 gross per annum

Closing Date: 21 November 2025

Are you a Safety Specialist looking for a new opportunity?

The Marine Society & Sea Cadets (MSSC) is the leading maritime charity for youth development and lifelong learning. We are a vibrant and growing charity inspiring young people to achieve their potential through challenge and nautical adventure and also enabling seafarers and maritime professionals to realise their potential through learning and career development. Working with our employees, cadets, and volunteers, we have built a strong vision and five-year Future Ready strategy to meet the growing demand for what we provide, both for young people, seafarers and maritime professionals – and the thousands who aspire to be the sea cadets and marine professionals of the future. It is also about equipping them to achieve their potential and thrive in a rapidly changing world, while growing our charity to benefit even more people – including those from under-represented or marginalised groups.

We are currently looking for a Safety and Assurance Officer to join our team.

About the role

The Safety & Assurance Officer (SAO) is an employee of the MSSC and a member of the MSSC National Safety Assurance Team (NSAT). This is a home-based role, with a primary focus on the Southern area, predominantly the South-East. The SAO will report to the Head of Safety, Health, and Environment.

The SAO will work closely with other SAOs and will be functionally accountable to:

• The Head of Inshore Boating for inshore boat assurance
• The Staff Royal Marines Officer for weapons and ammunition safety and security assurance

The role requires regular travel within the area of responsibility and, on occasion within the UK. It will involve evening and some weekend work to fulfil the role’s responsibilities.

Requirements

• Qualifications: Good general education and NEBOSH (or equivalent), with completion required during probation if not already held.
• Safety & Environmental Management: Experience implementing safety and environmental management systems, conducting risk assessments, and working within formal assurance frameworks.
• Incident Management: Experience managing, investigating, and reporting incidents.
• Training & Support: Ability to deliver training, guidance, and support to non-specialist staff or volunteers on safety, health, environmental, and assurance matters.
• Workload & Volunteer Management: Proven ability to manage a busy workload and effectively support and manage volunteers.

Responsibilities

• Join the Marine Society & Sea Cadets as a Safety and Assurance Officer, ensuring the highest standards of safety, health, environment (SHE), and operational compliance across our units and facilities.
• You’ll lead assurance inspections, maintain compliance with legislation and organisational regulations, and support the safe management of weapons, armouries, and inshore boating activities. Working closely with other members of the National Safety and Assurance Team (NSAT) and Area teams, you’ll oversee safety at events, camps, and competitions, conduct audits, and monitor incident reporting.
• This role plays a vital part in upholding the safety and welfare of our cadets and volunteers through proactive assurance, training, and continuous improvement.

For further information, please download the Recruitment Pack.  If you are interested in this role, please apply now!

Benefits

• 25 days annual leave per annum, increasing with length of service
• Hybrid working for many roles
• Volunteering Leave
• Life assurance (4x salary)
• Private medical insurance
• Generous pension (employer contribution up to 10%)
• Cycle to work scheme
• Access to the Marine Society Digital Library
• Wellbeing portal and EAP with 121 counselling
• Employee development: We are investing in our employees' development and have an annual calendar of learning and development opportunities, designed to support employees to develop into their roles and stretch them to achieve their full potential.

Additional Information

MSSC positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates from all backgrounds. Equity, diversity, and inclusion really matters to us, so we can best serve our beneficiaries from every community. We work to ensure a fair and consistent recruitment process and aim to be a charity where diversity of experience, identity and skills are valued and welcomed. MSSC is an equal opportunities employer.

We recognise our responsibilities to safeguard and protect the young people and vulnerable adults with whom we work. We do all we can to promote their health, safety and wellbeing, and we expect our staff to share this commitment and work in line with safeguarding policy, the MSSC’s values and ethos of inclusivity. We adhere to safer recruitment practices and therefore employment is subject to detailed pre-employment checks for successful candidates, including references and criminal disclosure checks and the completion of a disclosure questionnaire. 

All successful applicants are required to attend safeguarding training and undergo pre-employment checks including a criminal record check.

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