The CEA Lead is KAUST’s key technical expert in an emerging portfolio of controlled-environment agriculture partnerships with commercial greenhouse operators in the Kingdom. The role exists to provide technical oversight in these partnerships, to guide designers, engineers and operators from a grower’s standpoint, and to manage the design, delivery, analysis and reporting of a trial program. The post holder converts trials with partners and operations into transferable knowledge at scale, supporting KAUST’s objective of catalyzing the adoption of agricultural innovation across Saudi Arabia.

Major Responsibilities

• Interfaces for KAUST with commercial greenhouse operators, providing technical oversight of growing and climate optimization so that agronomic performance targets are met and KAUST’s technical standards are upheld on site.

• Engages with designers and engineers and guides their decisions from a grower’s standpoint, so that CEA facilities built as part of the program are fit for production and trials.

• Guides design finalization, tracks construction and supports commissioning of the greenhouse facilities to ensure that the delivered asset meets growing requirements.

• Develops a program of trials in collaboration with partners and KAUST faculties and ensures that trials are delivered to specification, that data is collected efficiently and analyzed accurately, and that results are reported clearly and on time, so that they are turned into transferable knowledge at scale.

• Sets cultivation protocols and monitoring routines and establishes trial design and data collection framework, so that practice is standardized, repeatable and auditable across sites.

• Advises on crop, variety, climate and planting decisions and on the planning and execution of operational tasks, so that decisions are commercially sound and agronomically robust.

• Interfaces with KAUST faculty to develop projects and bring scientific innovations into the partnerships, ensuring that research capability is translated into applied value.

• Develops an understanding of the partner businesses and contributes to building business cases for new and existing projects, so that investment decisions are supported by credible technical and commercial evidence.

Personal Requirements

Competencies

• Needs to have demonstrable, hands-on grower experience in commercial greenhouse production with responsibility in crop, variety, climate, planting and growing decisions.

• Requires ability to work with designers, engineers and operators and to guide and constructively challenge their decisions on technical merit, without taking on the design or engineering work itself.

• Needs to have experience in trial design, structured data collection and data analysis, with the analytical and organizational skills to run several trials concurrently to specification and to deadline.

• Needs the ability to report technical results clearly, accurately and on time to commercial and scientific audiences, with excellent written and spoken communication and presentation skills in English.

• Needs to have a working understanding of the commercial business context and to be able to contribute to the construction of business cases.

• Needs to be able to engage credibly with both external commercial partners and academic scientists, and to build durable working relationships across both.

• Needs the ability to work autonomously and take ownership of technical decisions in a site-based role with limited day-to-day supervision.

• Needs to have working knowledge of large language models (LLMs) as a working tool.

Essential

• MSc-level qualification in horticulture, agronomy, plant science or a related discipline, or equivalent professional standing acquired through commercial growing practice.

• Fluency in written and spoken English.

Preferable

• A scientific background — a PhD is a plus but is not required — given the importance of trial design and data collection and the highly technical nature of the role.

• Arabic language ability.

Experience

Essential

• Has held operational responsibility for growing in a commercial greenhouse setting, including the production of berries and in particular strawberry.

• Has a proven track record of designing data collection, and of collecting and analyzing production and trial data to support technical decisions.

• Has worked alongside designers, engineers and operational teams on greenhouse projects and has influenced their decisions.

• Has contributed to the development of business cases and understands how growing decisions translate into commercial outcomes.

• Has worked independently and directly with external partners and with scientists.

• Has practical working experience of using large language models (LLMs).

Preferable

• Has grown under hot, arid or otherwise challenging climatic conditions.

• Has broader protected-crop experience, for example tomato or other vine crops.

• Has been exposed to commercial climate-control systems or data-driven-growing tools.

• Has worked in the GCC region.

Research Scientist–Sustainable greenhouse production

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Research Scientist–Sustainable greenhouse production