Senior Audit Manager - VFM

Senior Audit Manager - Value For Money Contract type: Permanent Location: London or Newcastle offices based with a min 2 days a week attendance in either office. Salary: Newcastle salary; circa£67,000 & London salary, circa£74,500 plus Civil Service Employer Pension Contribution of 28.9% The NAO welcomes applications from candidates who work part-time and are keen to support colleagues to work flexibly including on a job share basis. Senior Audit Manager: Value for money (performance audit) Introduction Thank you for your interest in joining the National Audit Office (NAO) as a Senior Audit Manager. This job description will give you a better idea of who we are, what you will do when you join us, and what we offer. It also gives more detail/s about the application process. We are independent of government and the civil service, and we play a critical role supporting Parliament scrutinise how effectively the government spends public money. Our 2025-2030 strategy (https://bit.ly/3Qy36y7) sets out our ambition to contribute to two distinct outcomes – helping to improve the productivity and resilience of public services and supporting better financial management and reporting in government. Our strategy is also clear that government will need to innovate if it is to deliver effective and affordable public services. We will use our public audit perspective to highlight positive examples of innovation within the public sector and take account of government’s risk appetite in our audit approach. The recommendations from our work can result in financial savings and positive changes in government to improve services and ensure value for money for taxpayers. You will tackle complex projects that inform debates and influence some of the biggest decisions that government makes. You will work with dedicated and talented people toward shared and important goals. And, by taking on new opportunities and challenges, you’ll build a rewarding and fascinating career. We are looking to recruit Senior Audit Managers. We are looking for people with strong analytical and communication skills as well as experience of project and people management, which can be drawn from a range of backgrounds including experienced analysts, value for money (performance audit) auditors, the civil service and internal auditors.If you like what you see and can meet our requirements, then we want to hear from you. The role Each year we publish around 60 major value for money (VFM) reports looking at various government programmes and projects. VFM reports are multi-method reports often delivered at pace to achieve real impact. We write long form reports and other types of written communication on complex subjects in ways that nonspecialist or technical audiences can understand. Our work can cover any area where government spends public money, ranging from government’s plans to build new hospitals to the use of data analytics to tackle fraud and error. Our lessons learned reports bring together what we know on important recurring issues to make it easier for others to understand and apply the lessons from our work, such as government’s use of external consultants and key findings from the NAO’s financial audits. More about the NAO, including some of our recent value for money reports, is available on our website www.nao.org.uk Responsibilities Our Senior Audit Managers play a key role in making sure we achieve our objectives and secure impact from our work: You will lead our teams to deliver high-quality work that supports improvements in the delivery of public services. This involves planning, researching and drafting our value for money reports, working alongside sector or topic specialists, analysts and qualified accountants as well as applying strong quantitative and qualitative analytical skills. You will role model behaviours and ways of working to support us as an exemplar organisation. You will engage with external clients and stakeholders to deliver greater engagement with our work. You will get involved in other work too, including investigations, correspondence (from the public and MPs) and other work that supports Parliamentary select committees. All Senior Audit Managers are expected to spend part of their time developing their expertise in one or more specialist areas through our networks (Hubs) across the office. This includes providing analytical insight and support to others outside of your team on your areas of expertise such as analytical techniques and methods, commercial and regulatory issues, digital transformation and data use in the public sector, financial risk and management, major project delivery, and people and operational management. Relationships and Accountability You will manage a team to deliver value for money work to time and budget. You will work with other people of all grades. You will work with Senior Auditors and / or Senior Analysts who lead a team of Analysts and accounting trainees to deliver high-quality repo