Operational Resilience - Project Director

Closing Date: 12/01/2025

Salary: £99,889

Location: Birmingham

Full Time and Part Time considered

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is responsible for the regulation of UK statutory auditors and audit firms and for monitoring developments in the market. We aim, through our supervision and oversight, to develop a fair, evidence-based and comprehensive view of these firms, to judge whether they are being run in a manner that enhances audit quality and supports the resilience of individual firms and the wider audit market. We adopt a forward-looking supervisory approach to audit firms, and we hold firms to account for making the changes needed to safeguard and improve audit quality. Further information about the role of the FRC can be found at www.frc.org.uk.

Audit Market Supervision (AMS) takes a cross-market approach to areas of importance to audit quality and firm resilience, assessing the effectiveness of the audit firms’ arrangements in the following areas:

- Audit quality management arrangements

- Governance and leadership

- Culture and conduct

- Risk and resilience

- Operational separation

- Audit Market monitoring

Staff have a range of backgrounds (governance, culture, risk management, internal audit, regulation, and statutory audit) representing the broad subject matter within the team’s remit.

The Head of Risk and Resilience in AMS is seeking to appoint a Project Director to lead on the operational resilience of the largest audit firms – in other words, do they have appropriate processes and controls (for example risk management, internal audit, cyber-security, professional indemnity insurance) to mitigate the risks facing them.

The Role:

The role involves:

• designing and leading the monitoring and supervisory work on the operational risk- and resilience-related processes and controls at whole-firm level of the largest UK audit firms.
• identifying key findings and presenting effectively (both in writing and orally) to senior management in the firms to achieve change.
• contributing to the management of the AMS relationships with the firms, especially with their Chief Risk Officers and similar.
• working in a small team of specialists, and contributing to the management and strategy of the Risk and Resilience Team.

The Person:

A degree and/or professional qualification, as well as experience working in professional services or similar or a regulatory field are required. The ideal candidates will have:

• Significant experience in either risk management, internal audit, or similar process/controls-based work.
• Broad understanding of the how large multi-disciplinary audit firms are structured and managed.
• Strong written and oral communication & interpersonal skills, including drafting reports and presenting them to senior levels.
• Effective project and time management skills.
• Desirable: experience in/awareness of financial resilience (for example size and duration of bank facilities linked to the cashflow cycle and stress testing; availability of finance for strategic investments)
• Desirable: experience in regulation or monitoring/supervision in audit, accountancy, law or another sector.

Please apply by following the link our website https://www.frc.org.uk/frc-for-you/careers and uploading a copy of your CV and covering letter as a single document upload. In the covering letter, please set out, by reference to the person specification above how you meet the required skillset.

• How you meet the required skillset
• confirm that you have the right to work in the UK, and
• tell us where you heard about this job

Rewards and benefits

• The FRC offers remuneration packages, including 30 days annual leave, ability to buy extra leave.
• Generous employer pension contribution of 10%.
• Staff Employee Assistance Programme including confidential counselling and work life services.
• The FRC offers staff the opportunity to save at least 25% on the purchase of a new bike through the Cycle to work scheme.
• The FRC has a strong work/life balance ethos.

The FRC believes that equality of opportunity and diversity is important in the work that we do and we are strongly committed to being an inclusive employer. Our values of being fair and independent supports this commitment. We're a signatory to the Government's Disability Confident scheme, which means that we guarantee an interview to any disabled candidates entering under the scheme, should they meet the minimum criteria for a role.

Equal opportunities monitoring is an important means of demonstrating and implementing our commitment to promoting equality of opportunity and diversity. Completing our diversity form will assist the FRC to identify any barriers that prevent access to employment and career development for certain groups of people, and to develop solutions, such as action plans, new policies and practices.

The role is based in our central Birmingham office. The post holder should be able to work flexibly to support the team’s activities and also provide cover within the FRC as necessary. The FRC operates a hybrid working arrangement with its workforce. The FRC operates a hybrid working arrangement, with a expectation that 40% of a person's working time will be located at one of our offices per week, with precise arrangements to be agreed between the employee and the line manager.