Ocean Career: SAMS Senior Marine Environmental Consultant 19 May 2026 This role is to provide environmental consultancy leadership within the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) Enterprise delivery team, specifically within the Marine Energy core strategic area. This is a key high level technical position to develop and deliver high quality consultancy services to industry and regulators, ensuring projects are delivered effectively to time, cost and quality as per the agreed contractual requirements and to the ISO9001 standard. Job Purpose To provide environmental consultancy duties within the SAMS delivery team, including delivery of enterprise contracts, customer account management, opportunity generation and tender preparation. Analyse passive acoustic and visual marine mammal data, develop and test new bioacoustics analysis tools and statistical frameworks, including species distribution modelling. Conduct fieldwork, including equipment setup and maintenance, for visual and acoustic marine mammal surveys as required by SAMS Research and Enterprise (e.g., towed array surveys, static and drifting passive acoustics). Help secure and deliver commercial contracts, including tender preparation, data processing and analysis, quality assurance, and report writing. Provide marine environmental consultancy as part of the SAMS Enterprise team, with a focus on marine mammals, within commercial sectors such as but not limited to marine fisheries, offshore renewables, oil and gas and aquaculture. Involvement in marketing and conferences and leading in developing new research aligned with opportunities within SAMS Research and Enterprise commercial strategy direction and priorities. Qualification and Knowledge: PhD or Master’s degree with focus on marine mammals, bioacoustics and/or species distribution modelling (essential). Ability to analyse complex temporal and spatial, visual/acoustic datasets (essential). Evidence of scientific publications and experience sharing knowledge in reports, workshops and at conferences (essential). Technical knowledge and expertise in assessing impacts to marine megafauna from industrial sectors such as marine energy, fisheries or aquaculture (essential). Technical knowledge and demonstrated practical experience undertaking EIA/HRA impact assessments (desirable). Remain current with regulatory requirements regarding species protection, industry needs, and academic progress to develop and deliver high-quality projects (essential). Write high-quality reports for commercial customers (essential). Expertise in acoustic data analysis for marine mammals (e.g., PAMGuard, C POD/F-POD.exe) and underwater sound (e.g., PAMGuide, MATLAB, MANTA) (essential). Expertise using standard programming languages (e.g., R, Python, MATLAB) and GIS software (e.g., QGIS) (essential). Statistical analysis experience for various data types and long-term data sets (essential). Experience with species distribution/habitat and population impact modelling (e.g. GAMs, BRTs, iPCoD, DEPONS etc.; desirable). Expertise in acoustic data analysis using other acoustic analysis software (e.g., Raven, AviSoft) (desirable). Experience with analysis of photo-ID data (desirable). Experience with data quality control and data validation processes (desirable). Excellent written and oral communication skills, with the ability to explain scientific concepts to a varied audience, including disseminating results of scientific research (e.g. through writing scientific papers, giving presentations at workshops, conferences etc.) as well as writing reports for regulatory agencies to a high scientific and professional standard. Prepare equipment for and undertake fieldwork. Responsibilities here include, but are not limited to, preparing passive acoustic moorings, drifting and towed hydrophone arrays. Fieldwork activities will include deployment and recovery of acoustic moorings, conducting visual and acoustic surveys using towed or drifting arrays, as well as marine mammal photo-ID surveys. Experience in offshore vessel-based survey organisation, execution and management (particularly relating to deployment and retrieval of PAM equipment; essential). Experience operating and maintaining passive acoustic monitoring equipment (e.g., Soundtraps, RTSYS EA-SDA14 & Sylence, C-/F-PODs; essential). Experience with mooring design and acoustic mooring preparation, including use of acoustic release mechanisms (desirable). ENG1 and PST certificates (or equivalent/higher; desirable). Location : SAMS, Oban, UK #J-18808-Ljbffr