Fire Life Safety Manager

About Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. is a key delivery partner for one of Saudi Arabia’s flagship giga-projects, a central pillar of Vision 2030. This landmark development, located approximately 45 km southwest of Riyadh, is designed as the Kingdom’s future capital of entertainment, sports, and culture, aiming to diversify the economy and enhance quality of life.

Role Overview

The Fire Life Safety Manager will support the end-to-end delivery of fire and life safety assurance across a diverse portfolio of city assets. This full-time position in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, covers the complete asset lifecycle, including design, construction, commissioning, handover, operational readiness, and buildings in use. The role requires over 10 years of experience and involves providing competent technical and operational leadership, undertaking fire risk assessments, and delivering risk-based inspection and audit programs.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead fire and life safety assurance across the full asset lifecycle, including design, construction, commissioning, handover, operational readiness, and buildings in use.
• Plan, undertake, and document fire risk assessments across operational assets, construction sites, event spaces, temporary facilities, and back-of-house environments.
• Maintain fire risk assessment programs and risk registers, tracking residual risks, corrective actions, interim controls, overdue items, and risk acceptance decisions.
• Deliver risk-based fire and life safety inspections and technical audits covering means of escape, compartmentation, fire stopping, structural fire protection, fire doors, smoke control, suppression, detection, alarm, emergency lighting, firefighting access, and fire water systems.
• Identify, risk-rank, and manage fire safety deficiencies, ensuring corrective actions are supported by clear technical evidence and verified before close-out.
• Review tenant, operator, contractor, event, and temporary fit-out proposals, and monitor compliance with hot work, fire watch, impairment management, permit-to-work, and construction fire safety requirements.
• Act as a rostered tactical Silver commander during fire, evacuation, and life safety incidents, establishing command arrangements and coordinating with relevant emergency services and asset operators.
• Lead evacuation management, incident reporting, decision logging, operational debriefs, and lessons-learned activities following incidents, exercises, and major drills.
• Review fire strategies, engineering reports, performance-based designs, shop drawings, hydraulic calculations, cause-and-effect matrices, alarm zoning, and proposed alternative solutions.
• Witness and verify the commissioning and integrated testing of fire detection, alarm, voice alarm, suppression, smoke control, fire pump, and fire water systems.
• Assess asset readiness before handover, activation, and public opening, providing recommendations on outstanding deficiencies, interim mitigation measures, and go or no-go decisions.
• Investigate incidents and system failures, analyze performance trends, prepare technical reports and assurance dashboards, and support stakeholder engagement, training, exercises, and capability development.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Demonstrable experience completing and signing off fire risk assessments for complex, high-occupancy, or high-consequence environments.
• Proven experience delivering fire and life safety inspection and audit programs, managing deficiencies through to close-out, and supporting incident investigations.
• Practical emergency response experience with assessed competence at tactical or Silver command level, gained through live incidents, exercises, or major drills.
• Experience across the asset lifecycle, including design review, construction assurance, systems commissioning, handover, and operational readiness.
• Strong knowledge of SBC 201, SBC 801, Saudi Civil Defense requirements, and relevant international standards, including NFPA, IBC, IFC, BS 9991, BS 9999, and PAS 79.
• Experience within large-scale mixed-use developments, entertainment destinations, stadia, theme parks, major events, giga-projects, or similarly complex environments; Saudi Arabia or wider GCC experience is strongly preferred.
• Strong technical reporting, stakeholder management, analytical, and communication skills, with the ability to exercise sound judgment and provide clear direction under pressure.

Work Location

This position is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and supports projects across all SA Regions.