Head of Compliance & Risk

Oritain is the global leader in product origin verification, with locations in Auckland, Dunedin, London, Singapore and Washington D.C. Our mission is critical: to protect people and the planet by ensuring transparency and integrity in global supply chains. As supply chain transparency becomes increasingly important worldwide, the demand for our work continues to grow.

The Head of Compliance & Risk is a newly created senior role responsible for building and embedding Oritain’s enterprise-wide risk and compliance capability. Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer, this role will play a critical part in helping the organisation move from an informal and reactive approach to risk and compliance toward a structured, proactive, and proportionate framework suited to a fast-growing global business.

The role will focus on building practical frameworks that enable the business to operate confidently and responsibly, without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy. You’ll work closely with leaders across the organisation to ensure compliance and risk management are embedded in day-to-day decision-making and support Oritain’s commercial ambitions. A key early priority will be ensuring the organisation is well positioned to meet compliance requirements associated with US government contracting, supporting the business as it develops opportunities within this market.

Key Responsibilities:

• Establish and lead Oritain’s global risk and compliance capability, assessing regulatory obligations across the UK, US, and other key jurisdictions and building scalable frameworks that support growth while maintaining strong governance.
• Act as the internal owner for US regulatory compliance, ensuring the business is well positioned to pursue commercial and government opportunities by embedding compliance early in bids, contracts, and delivery.
• Design and implement the organisation’s enterprise risk management framework, maintaining the corporate risk register and leading risk assessments for strategic initiatives such as US expansion, government contracts, and new partnerships.
• Oversee compliance monitoring and reporting, identify and close gaps, and provide clear risk insights to the CFO, Executive Leadership Team, and Board.
• Embed compliance and risk thinking into everyday decision-making, support new initiatives and market entry, and ensure policies and processes remain active, understood, and effective.
• Lead training, provide trusted guidance to stakeholders, and manage investigations or regulatory engagement where required.

Skills & Experience:

• Strong experience in risk, compliance, or governance roles, ideally within complex or international environments.
• Experience in building or designing risk and compliance frameworks.
• Comfortable working in hands-on roles within growing organisations, balancing structure with commercial pragmatism.
• Strong understanding of both UK and US regulatory environments, particularly in data protection, ethics, anti-bribery, and contracting standards.
• Experience supporting US government contracting readiness or working within regulated US markets.
• Confident engaging with senior stakeholders and able to communicate complex risk and compliance matters clearly at both executive and board level.
• Sound judgement, strong commercial awareness, and the ability to introduce the right level of structure without creating unnecessary complexity.

Company Benefits:

• Hybrid working set-up (Minimum 3 days per week required in our office in Farringdon, London)
• Paid Leave- 35 days (inclusive of public holidays)
• Birthday Off
• Enhanced Parental Leave
• Life Insurance
• Critical Illness Cover
• Choice of Private Medical Insurance or Annual Health Check
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
• Pension
• Breakfast, Snacks, Friday lunch & Barista Coffee Machine in the office
• Learning Portal with over 100,000 assets available to support professional development

We believe great teams are built from different perspectives, experiences, and ways of thinking. We welcome applications from everyone and encourage you to bring your whole self to the process. If there’s anything we can do to support you, including any reasonable adjustments at any stage of hiring, please let the team know.