AI Governance and Assurance - Senior Specialist
United Kingdom
Role purpose
As our AI Governance and Assurance lead, you will run the day-to-day operation and continual improvement of Accelya's AI Management System, under the strategic direction of the SVP, Privacy, AI & Data Governance. You will translate regulatory obligations, approved policy and ISO/IEC 42001 requirements into practical governance activities, control testing, evidence and reporting. The successful candidate will need to ensure AI is governed and assured as it is designed, built and released across our products.
This position will be responsible for acting as the main governance partner to our Product and Technology teams, so that we remain compliant in how we integrate AI into our solutions. The focus will be on embedding governance into the product development lifecycle, assessing AI risk and impact, testing controls and getting Accelya ready for independent ISO/IEC 42001 assessment. In line with Accelya´s global business strategy, values and missions. On top of that, you will act as the Subject Matter expert on wider AI topics such as AI in relation to HR and Recruitment.
Duties & Responsibilities
- Run the day-to-day operation and continual improvement of Accelya's AI Management System, maintaining the control records, evidence library and action plan, and supporting readiness for internal review and independent ISO/IEC 42001 assessment
- Build and manage trusted working relationships with Product Management, Engineering and Data Science teams, acting as the governance partner for how AI is integrated into our product set
- Operate proportionate AI Governance by Design across customer-facing products and internal use cases, from intake and risk classification through design, development, testing, deployment, production monitoring and retirement
- Conduct AI risk and impact assessments, evaluating privacy, ethics, fairness, bias, transparency, explainability and human oversight, with enhanced assessment of higher-risk uses such as HR-related processes
- Execute assurance reviews of priority controls, checking they are performed consistently and supported by complete, current and traceable evidence
- Review design-time and runtime evidence for generative and agentic AI, including autonomy, tool and data access, human intervention, logging and anomalous behaviour
- Maintain a clear view of material AI risks, control exceptions and overdue remediation, challenging action plans and escalating exposures that need leadership decisions
- Produce dashboards and reporting on risk, control performance and assessment readiness, and support customer assurance, audits and regulatory enquiries
- Maintain the AI inventory and OneTrust Responsible AI workflows, and run practical workshops and training for Product and Technology teams
Required Experience & Skills
- Proven experience and exposure in AI governance; must understand the frameworks and guardrails required to ensure AI is implemented ethically and properly within our internal tools but mainly for the products and technology Accelya builds and creates.
- Working knowledge of responsible AI risks across privacy, ethics, fairness, bias, transparency, explainability and human oversight
- At 5+ years' experience within privacy, technology risk, assurance, model risk, data governance or a comparable control discipline within a software, SaaS or technology-led organisation
- Practical experience working closely with Product and Engineering teams across the software-product lifecycle, translating policy, regulatory or risk requirements into usable controls, evidence and remediation actions
- Hands-on experience conducting risk or impact assessments and executing control tests, including reviewing evidence quality and tracking remediation to closure
- Familiarity with AI governance frameworks such as ISO/IEC 42001, NIST AI RMF or the EU AI Act
- Strong privacy understanding including GDPR
- Sufficient technical literacy to understand AI lifecycles, cloud services, data flows, model or agent monitoring and software-development controls
- Strong communicator, able to explain material risks and evidence gaps to technical and non-technical stakeholders, with the confidence to challenge constructively and escalte appropriately
Preferred Experience & Skills
- Experience in travel technology, payments or another complex B2B software environment
- Practical use of OneTrust Responsible AI or comparable governance tooling; familiarity wit
