Governance & Assurance Lead

Job summary

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it’s really like to work at HMRC.

Visit our YouTube channel to watch the full series and come and discover your potential.

Our team is rapidly growing as we invest in new technologies and capabilities, and we are in search of enthusiastic individuals who can help us in achieving our mission. We are continually improving the service we give to our customers and, in line with this, we are creating a new response and management team within the HMRC Fraud Prevention Centre.

The Fraud Prevention Centre (FPC) is a strategic capability within HMRC Security, designed to safeguard customers and the organisation against identity-related fraud and emerging threats. Its mission is built on three interconnected pillars: Protection, Detection, and Response, all underpinned by advanced threat intelligence and customer support. The Centre operates across multiple functional areas, including Proactive Protection, Customer Support & Response, and Strategy & Advisory, to deliver a holistic approach to fraud prevention.

Job description

The Governance and Assurance Lead sets the direction for IDVA governance, audit, assurance, action management, reporting and briefing activity. The role establishes the standards, operating rhythm and escalation routes needed to ensure risks, audit findings, compliance requirements, governance commitments, and management actions are actively managed through the appropriate operational and senior governance routes.

Working with central audit and compliance teams, management action leads, senior leaders and stakeholders across IDVA, FPC, security, risk and operational delivery, the postholder will provide senior direction and challenge to ensure responses to audits, assurance reviews, commissions and governance requirements are timely, evidence-based, defensible and approved by the right senior owners.

The postholder will maintain a single, authoritative view of IDVA commitments, dependencies, and escalations, enabling leaders to understand priorities, progress and areas requiring intervention. This will support timely delivery, stronger assurance and well-informed decisions, reducing ambiguity and helping senior leaders focus attention where it adds most value.

The role leads and directs a small team, including SO-level support, while retaining accountability for senior judgement, assurance quality, escalation, reporting narrative, and overall delivery.

The successful candidate will be an experienced governance, assurance, audit, compliance or risk professional with strong leadership, stakeholder engagement, and delivery skills. They will be able to operate strategically, set direction, shape senior narrative, and apply judgement while maintaining grip of actions, deadlines, governance commitments and reporting through supporting staff and stakeholder networks.

IDVA Governance and Senior Oversight

• Set the direction for IDVA governance arrangements, ensuring leaders have a clear view of risks, decisions, assurance commitments, and escalation requirements, so issues are surfaced early and governance time is focused on the matters that most need senior attention.
• Provide senior oversight of operational governance, including the Fraud Prevention Operational Working Group (FOWG), and engage with wider identity and HMRC governance structures to ensure appropriate IDVA representation and escalation.
• Regularly review the performance, value, membership, outputs, and effectiveness of IDVA governance vehicles, recommending improvements where forums or ways of working need strengthening, so governance remains purposeful, proportionate, and useful to decision-makers.
• Maintain a forward look of upcoming governance, audit, assurance, reporting and briefing requirements, identifying dependencies, pressure points and decisions needed to maintain delivery grip.

Person specification

Audit, Assurance and Compliance Engagement

• Lead IDVA engagement with central audit, compliance, and assurance teams, setting the approach for audits, reviews, evidence requests and formal responses before actions are agreed.
• Secure timely input from subject matter experts, management leads and relevant HMRC representatives ensuring audit requests are accurate, complete, evidence-based and aligned to the agreed requirement.
• Function as a senior quality gate for audit, assurance, and compliance submissions, ensuring responses are robust, defensible, and approved by the appropriate senior owner before release; ongoing action delivery is managed separately through the action tracking process.
• Identify cross-cutting assurance themes, recurring risks and issues requiring attention, using these insights to strengthen governance, escalation, and improvement activity, helping IDVA address root causes rather than treating issues in isolation.

Management Action Delivery, Tracking and Evidence

• Own the overall IDVA action position after audit, assurance or governance actions are agreed, maintaining accurate tracking across senior owners, action leads, deadlines, evidence, risks, and dependencies.
• Maintain a clear action view, ensuring leaders can quickly understand delivery status, blockers, overdue items, sign-off requirements, and decisions required.
• Hold action owners to account for timely delivery, challenging slippage, managing deadlines, unblocking issues, and escalating overdue or high-risk actions through the appropriate governance route, helping maintain momentum and avoid late surprises.
• Set expectations for action closure, ensuring evidence is retained, traceable, signed off and suitable for scrutiny once delivery is complete, reducing the risk of repeat findings and providing confidence that actions have been properly resolved.

Senior Reporting and Briefing

• Own the coordination, quality, and strategic narrative of FPC and wider IDVA contributions to senior reports, briefings, commissions, and governance updates.
• Direct and challenge input from across IDVA, converting it into clear, concise reporting that gives a balanced view of progress, risks, issues, achievements and required interventions, helping senior audiences make informed decisions quickly.
• Capture and share positive progress, delivery milestones, and examples of impact from across FPC and IDVA, using multiple reporting and communication channels to promote activity and value.
• Set standards for IDVA reporting and briefing, ensuring outputs are timely, consistent, and aligned with operational priorities.

Stakeholder Engagement and Cross-IDVA Coordination

• Build effective relationships across IDVA, FPC, central audit, compliance, risk, security, service ownership, operational delivery and wider HMRC teams.
• Canvass updates, evidence, and views from a broad stakeholder mix, ensuring the right HMRC representation and subject matter expert input is secured.
• Clarify the purpose, scope, ownership and deadlines for commissions, governance asks and evidence requests, ensuring stakeholder input is focused, timely and aligned to senior requirements.
• Influence and challenge stakeholders to improve the quality, timeliness and consistency of responses and action delivery, escalating where senior intervention is required to secure agreed outcomes and reduce delivery friction.

Leadership and Continu