Head of IELTS Risk and Compliance - 6981

Job Title: Head of IELTS Risk & Compliance

Salary: £67,300 - £90,100

Location: Cambridge, UK - Hybrid (2 days per week in the office)

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full time 35 hours per week

Lead global risk and compliance for the world's most trusted English test.

We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, part of the University of Cambridge. We are a world leading academic publisher and assessment organisation, and a proud co-owner of IELTS, the world's most trusted English language test.

We are seeking a highly accomplished risk and compliance professional to help shape the future of IELTS. You will play a pivotal role in maintaining and enhancing the standards that protect the integrity of the test, ensuring that we continue to deliver a test that is valued, respected and trusted by millions of people worldwide every year.

As the Cambridge lead for IELTS operational risk and compliance, you will drive improvements to how risk and compliance are managed across our global operations. You will help embed best practice frameworks, build risk capability, and offer expert guidance to senior and executive teams.

You will lead our end to end risk management framework, ensuring risks are identified, understood, and effectively mitigated across operational, regulatory, and reputational domains.

As the organisation's most senior expert in Ofqual conditions and IELTS Standards, you will ensure the test is delivered consistently and compliantly worldwide.

Working across a diverse international ecosystem of partners and centres, you will play a central role in ensuring safe, consistent, compliant delivery of IELTS to millions of test takers in more than 140 countries.

Additional responsibilities and accountabilities include:

• Advising on emerging risks, regulatory changes, and strategic decisions impacting global operations.
• Producing high quality risk and compliance reporting for the IELTS partnership, Cambridge leadership, and regulatory bodies.
• Delivering training and capability building programmes that embed a consistent and mature risk culture across teams.
• Leading serious risk escalations, providing accurate, decision ready insights to senior stakeholders and regulatory bodies.
• Ensuring teams understand Ofqual conditions and IELTS Standards, and that compliance is maintained across all aspects of global test delivery.
• Leading IELTS responses to regulatory audits, investigations, and compliance notifications, ensuring the integrity of evidence and corrective actions.
• Strengthening compliance monitoring systems, knowledge repositories and governance platforms, ensuring they support global consistency and regulatory assurance.
• Overseeing the architecture and quality of knowledge base content and workflows, ensuring alignment with compliance and audit best practice.

• Leading, mentoring and developing a team of Senior Managers and Risk & Compliance Leads.

This position is hybrid, requiring 40-60% of your time on site in Cambridge for collaboration and face to face connection. Flexible working requests will be considered from day one, including adjustments for candidates with disabilities or long term health conditions.

You will bring strong experience in risk and regulatory compliance management in the assessment or adjacent (e.g. education) field and can demonstrate:

• Deep understanding of English language assessment, regulatory frameworks and global migration/recognition contexts, including a strong grasp of UK and international regulatory requirements (including Ofqual).
• Significant senior leadership experience in risk, compliance, governance, or regulatory roles within global or highly regulated environments.
• Extensive experience leading risk, compliance, incident, and change management in complex, multi partner ecosystems.
• Expert knowledge of operational risk frameworks, threat modelling, control design, root cause analysis, and audit methodologies.
• An understanding of test integrity, quality assurance, and continuous improvement practices.
• Proven ability to design and optimise systems, processes, and operating models for global scalability and resilience.
• High level analytical, communication, and judgement skills, with the ability to make decisions under pressure and within a complex environment.
• Strong interpersonal, negotiation, and stakeholder management capabilities across cultures and organisations, including the ability to influence and collaborate at senior and executive levels.

If you meet the above minimum criteria, we encourage you to apply.

Your application will be even stronger if you can also demonstrate:

• Familiarity with data analytics and platforms and tools to support risk identification, monitoring, and reporting.
• Understanding of partnership and stakeholder dynamics, particularly in multi agency or cross border collaborations, to ensure aligned practices.
• Knowledge of quality assurance and continuous improvement practices in operational contexts.
• Experience in high stakes test delivery or regulated education sectors.
• Familiarity with Zendesk or equivalent knowledgebase platforms.
• Excellent resource planning, prioritisation and decision making skills

For a detailed job description, please refer to the link at the bottom of the advert on our careers site.

We are a Disability Confident (DC) employer that is committed to equality and inclusion ensuring our recruitment process is accessible to all. The DC scheme's Offer of an Interview commitment applies to applicants who opt in, and disclose a disability or a long term health condition, and best meet the minimum criteria for the role. In instances where interviewing all qualifying candidates is not practicable, we prioritise those who best meet the minimum criteria, as we would for applicants who do not have a disability or long term health condition.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is an approved UK employer for the sponsorship of eligible roles and applicants under the Skilled Worker visa route. Please refer to the gov.uk website for guidance to understand your own eligibility based on the role you are applying for.

We will support you to be at your best in work and to live well outside of it. In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a world class, flexible rewards package, featuring family friendly and planet friendly benefits including:

• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Private medical and Permanent Health Insurance
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Group personal pension scheme
• Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
• Green travel schemes

Ready to pursue your potential? Apply now.

We aim to support candidates by making our interview process clear and transparent. The closing date for all applications will be 26th March 2026. We will review applications on an ongoing basis, and if you are shortlisted and progressed through the stages, you can expect:

• First stage virtual interview via MS Teams: to take place on 13th and 14th April.
• Second stage in person interview at our offices in Cambridge: Dates to be agreed in April. In addition to the interview, you will be provided with a task to complete which will be returned by email in advance of your interview

If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process due to a disability or a long term health condition, there will be an opportunity for you to inform us via the online application form. We will do our best to accommodate your needs.

Please note that successful applicants will be subject to satisfactory background checks including DBS due to working in a regulated industry.

We are committed to an equitable recruitment process. As such, applications must be submitted via our official online application procedure. Please refrain from sending your CV directly to our recruiters. If you experience technical difficulties or require additional support with submitting your online application, contact the Recruiter.

Joining us is your opportunity to pursue potential. You will belong to a collaborative team that is exploring new and better ways to serve students, teachers and researchers across the globe - for the benefit of individuals, society and the world. Sharing our mission will inspire your own growth, development and progress, in an environment which embraces difference, change and aspiration.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is committed to being a place where anyone can enjoy a successful career, where it is safe to speak up, and where we learn continuously to improve together. We welcome applications from all candidates, regardless of demographic characteristics (age, disability, educational attainment, ethnicity, gender, marital status, neurodiversity, religion, sex, gender identity and sexual identity), cultural, or social class/background.

We believe better outcomes come through diversity of thought, background and approach. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and communities, actively seeking to employ people from a wide range of different communities.