EHS Manager: Job Description, Salary, Certifications, and Career Path (2026)

The EHS manager title puts two different regulatory worlds in the same job. OSHA covers the workplace. EPA covers what leaves it. Most safety professionals understand one or the other going in. The EHS manager is expected to handle both, often with one team, sometimes with no team at all.

That’s the honest starting point for understanding the role. It’s not just a safety manager with a fancier title. The environmental side adds a separate set of federal regulations, state agency relationships, permit obligations, and compliance deadlines that have nothing to do with OSHA’s injury and illness framework.

What EHS Managers Do Day to Day

The job description on a posting won’t tell you what the days actually look like. Here’s a realistic breakdown.

On the safety side, EHS managers run the OSHA compliance program. That means maintaining the OSHA 300 log, managing the written hazard communication program, overseeing lockout/tagout and confined space programs, running incident investigations, and delivering or coordinating training. Workers’ compensation oversight usually falls here too, including working with HR to manage claims and return-to-work.

On the environmental side, the scope depends heavily on the facility. A distribution center might have minimal environmental obligations. A chemical plant or metal fabrication facility might have air permits under the Clean Air Act, stormwater discharge permits, hazardous waste generator status under RCRA, and regular agency inspections. The EHS manager is the person who makes sure permits don’t lapse, reports get filed, and recordkeeping holds up under scrutiny.

Emergency response planning sits at the intersection of both. OSHA requires emergency action plans. EPA requires emergency response planning under EPCRA for facilities with certain hazardous chemicals. At many facilities, those two plans need to be coordinated into one workable document.

Training programs, incident investigations, and regulatory agency relationships are ongoing. Add contractor management, management of change reviews, and any ISO 14001 or 45001 work the company is pursuing, and you have a full calendar.

EHS Manager vs Safety Manager

The titles overlap, but the differences matter when you’re choosing a role or negotiating compensation.

A safety manager focuses on occupational safety and health. The regulatory framework is OSHA. The metrics are injury rates, near-miss reports, and workers’ comp costs. The stakeholders are operations, HR, and front-line supervisors.

An EHS manager adds environmental compliance. The regulatory framework expands to include EPA, state environmental agencies, and potentially Department of Transportation for hazardous materials transport. The metrics add permit compliance rates, waste disposal costs, and environmental incident counts. The stakeholders now include plant engineers, environmental consultants, and state agency inspectors.

That extra scope is why EHS manager roles typically pay more than equivalent safety manager roles at the same type of facility. It’s not just a title upgrade. It’s more regulatory surface area and more accountability.

At larger companies, environmental and safety functions are sometimes split into separate departments. An EHS director might have a safety manager and an environmental manager both reporting to them. In that structure, neither direct report carries the full EHS scope. At smaller companies and mid-size manufacturers, one person carries everything.

When you’re interviewing for an EHS manager role, ask specifically what percentage of the role is environmental versus safety. Some “EHS manager” postings are really safety manager jobs with a broader title. Others are genuinely split. You want to know before you accept.

Salary by Experience and Industry

Per BLS OEWS May 2024, the median annual wage for occupational health and safety specialists (SOC 19-5011) is $83,910 nationally. EHS manager roles sit above the broader specialist median because of the management component and the environmental scope.

The ASSP Salary Survey 2023 provides more granular data for the profession. Ranges below reflect both sources and current market conditions. Verify current figures at bls.gov/oes and assp.org, as these figures change annually.

Industry matters as much as experience. Manufacturing, chemical, oil and gas, and semiconductor pay toward the top of these ranges. Healthcare, retail, and general services tend to pay toward the bottom. A senior EHS manager at a Gulf Coast chemical plant earns significantly more than a senior EHS manager at a hospital system, even with equivalent experience and credentials.

Certifications That Matter

The CSP (Certified Safety Professional) from BCSP is the primary credential for the safety side of the EHS role. It requires a bachelor’s degree and four years of qualifying safety experience. For most EHS manager roles at larger companies, the CSP is either preferred or required.

The CHMM (Certified Hazardous Materials Manager) from IHMM is the equivalent credential for the environmental side. It covers hazardous waste management, environmental compliance, and emergency response. If your role has a significant environmental compliance component, particularly at facilities with RCRA waste generator status or EPA permits, the CHMM adds real value and signals to employers that you understand both sides of the title.

The CIH (Certified Industrial Hygienist) from ABIH is relevant for EHS managers at industrial facilities with significant chemical exposure, noise, or other occupational health hazards. Chemical plants, semiconductor fabs, and pharmaceutical manufacturers often prefer CIH for senior EHS roles.

Most EHS managers pursue the CSP first and add CHMM later if the role demands it. If you’re in a role where environmental compliance is already a primary function, consider pursuing both simultaneously after you have enough qualifying experience.

Industries That Hire EHS Managers

Manufacturing employs more EHS managers than any other sector. The combination of OSHA general industry regulations, EPA permit obligations, and hazardous materials handling creates consistent demand. Automotive plants, food processing facilities, metal fabrication shops, and consumer goods manufacturers all run dedicated EHS functions.

Chemical manufacturing and oil and gas are the highest-paying sectors for EHS managers. The regulatory complexity is higher, the consequences of non-compliance are more severe, and the hazard management demands are more intensive. An EHS manager at a petroleum refinery deals with Process Safety Management under OSHA 1910.119, air permits under EPA’s Title V program, and emergency response planning under EPCRA simultaneously.

Pharmaceuticals and semiconductor manufacturing pay well and have intensive EHS requirements. Both involve chemical hazards, clean room protocols, and wastewater compliance. Semiconductor fabs in particular have complex chemical waste streams and air emission obligations.

Utilities, including electric generation and water treatment, have significant EHS obligations and relatively stable employment. The work is less intense than chemical or oil and gas, but the regulatory requirements are substantial.

Construction and healthcare employ large numbers of safety professionals but tend to use the “safety manager” title rather than EHS because the environmental compliance component is lighter. EHS manager titles in those sectors usually indicate a large enough operation to have genuine environmental obligations alongside safety.

The Scope Problem

The scope of an EHS manager role varies more than almost any other management title in the safety profession. Two postings with identical titles can be completely different jobs.

At a small manufacturer with 50 employees, the EHS manager is often a department of one. You run the safety program, manage one or two hazardous waste manifests per year, maintain the OSHA 300 log, and deliver all the required training yourself. The work is broad but not deep.

At a large chemical facility, the EHS manager might have a team of six and spend 40% of the time on EPA compliance alone. Permit renewals, agency inspections, emissions reporting, and compliance calendar management are a full workload before you touch the safety side.

Before accepting an EHS manager role, ask what the current team size is, what the facility’s OSHA and EPA compliance status is, and what the biggest compliance challenge was in the last 12 months. The answers tell you whether you’re walking into a well-run program or a backlog of deferred obligations. Both situations exist. You need to know which one you’re accepting.

Career Progression from EHS Manager

The typical progression runs from EHS manager to senior EHS manager, then EHS director, then VP of EHS or corporate EHS director at larger organizations.

The step from EHS manager to senior EHS manager often involves taking on multi-site responsibilities. A senior EHS manager at a manufacturer might support five or six regional facilities, each with their own compliance obligations. The work becomes more about building and auditing programs than running them directly.

The EHS director role at a publicly traded company increasingly overlaps with ESG (environmental, social, and governance) reporting. Large companies now publish annual sustainability reports with greenhouse gas inventories, water usage data, and waste reduction commitments. That reporting requirement draws heavily on the environmental compliance work that EHS professionals already do. EHS directors who can speak the language of sustainability reporting alongside traditional compliance are increasingly valuable at publicly traded manufacturers and Fortune 500 companies.

The VP of EHS or Chief Safety Officer title exists primarily at very large organizations. Getting there requires both deep functional expertise and demonstrated ability to manage across business units and influence at the executive level. Most people in those roles spent significant time as multi-site EHS directors before moving up.

Why EHS Managers Are Hard to Replace

An EHS manager who has been at a facility for three or more years carries institutional knowledge that doesn’t exist in any manual.

They know which permit conditions are actively enforced and which the agency has historically overlooked. They know which operations team supervisors actually follow safety protocols and which ones need direct follow-up after every training. They know where the deferred maintenance items are and what the real risk profile of the facility looks like versus what the OSHA 300 log shows.

That knowledge takes years to accumulate. When an experienced EHS manager leaves, the facility doesn’t just lose the role. It loses the informal compliance history, the agency relationships, and the operational context that makes programs work in practice. Replacing that is expensive and slow. It’s one of the reasons experienced EHS managers with strong track records have real power in compensation negotiations and in choosing where they work.