Principal, Quality Assurance in Sheffield

In this role, you will lead end-to-end quality management across Pearson Qualifications (PQ), ensuring the secure, reliable and compliant development and delivery of qualifications that learners and institutions trust. This role aligns with industry-level titles such as Senior Quality Lead, Head of Quality Management or Quality Assurance Director.

Why This Role Exists

This role exists to safeguard and continuously strengthen the quality of qualification development and delivery across Pearson Qualifications. You will design, embed and improve a robust Qualifications Quality Management Framework aligned to Pearson's Global Quality Standards Framework and regulatory expectations, enabling quality-by-design across teams and maintaining oversight and accountability through governance forums.

You won't simply oversee quality - you will shape how it is defined, measured and improved. Your work will protect learner outcomes, strengthen compliance and enable resilience across a complex, global portfolio.

What You'll Be Excited to Work On

• Designing and embedding a single, centralised view of quality performance across PQ
• Defining quality gates and acceptance criteria, and ensuring audit-ready documentation
• Leading readiness assessments and dry runs ahead of peak series and key development milestones to ensure secure, reliable delivery
• Turning audit findings, incidents and near-misses into systemic improvements
• Building integrated dashboards and early warning indicators that surface trends, outliers and control effectiveness, linked to risk and incident tooling.
• Partnering with the Pearson Qualifications Transformation programme to embed learnings and end-to-end quality and process improvements in transformed products and services
• Equipping teams through concise training, playbooks and coaching to embed quality-by-design, and driving senior stakeholder decisions via governance forums.

Your First 6 Months

In your first six months, you will:

• Establish a clear, audit-ready Quality Management Framework
• Embed quality governance rhythms and reporting into Qualifications Reform, Transformation and Operational Delivery Governance forums
• Prioritise and review high-risk processes in partnership with Risk and Internal Audit
• Stand up a single source of truth to visibly track quality performance with dashboards, control metrics and early warning indicators
• Lead at least one readiness exercise or dry run and initiate plans for identified gaps
• Kick off a targeted capability uplift plan and establish a senior-stakeholder governance engagement cadence

Why This Role Is Different

Unlike many quality roles that focus on assurance alone, this position combines strategy, governance, operational execution and continuous improvement. You will operate at the intersection of quality, risk, regulatory compliance and qualification development and delivery. You will provide an independent assurance voice into go/no-go and trade-off decisions, while empowering teams to own quality and driving accountability at senior levels. This is a visible, high-impact role with senior stakeholder engagement and business unit wide influence.

What You'll Own

We focus on outcomes, not task lists. Success in This Role Looks Like:

• A fully embedded, audit-ready Quality Management Framework aligned to ISO and regulatory standards
• A single source of truth for quality performance with clear early warning indicators and integrated risk linkages
• Timely, verified closure of quality related audit findings
• Improved operational resilience and measurable learner and customer outcomes
• Teams demonstrating improved quality capability and ownership, with a visible shift toward quality-by-design

Top Priorities:

• Design and embed the Quality Management Framework and governance model
• Lead the end-to-end quality lifecycle for qualifications from design and development through results release and certification.
• Strengthen integration between quality, risk, incident management and audit functions
• Uplift capability and culture across teams and drive decisions via governance with accountable senior stakeholders

You'll Lead, Create or Influence:

• Quality governance, standards, operating rhythms and escalation paths aligned with PMO governance
• Readiness simulations, contingency planning and resilience exercises for quality-critical scenarios.
• RCA (Root Cause Analysis), Corrective and Preventative Action (CAPA) and systemic continuous improvement initiatives, translating insights into prioritised, sustained changes
• Cross-functional collaboration across Product, Assessment, Technology, Operations, Regulation, Risk Internal Audit and supplier partners
• Data standards and tooling for quality metrics; integration with incident and risk data and tooling
• Concise training, clinics and toolkits to embed quality-by-design across functions; senior stakeholder engagement in governance forums
• Direct line management and capability uplift of the Process Analyst

About You

You bring deep expertise in quality management within complex, regulated environments, and you are someone who operates with integrity, independence and structured thinking. You likely have:

• Extensive experience leading Quality Management Systems aligned to ISO standards
• A strong track record partnering with Risk and Internal Audit functions and meeting audit evidence requirements
• Experience delivering RCA, CAPA, and continuous improvement using Lean/Six Sigma
• Proficiency with quality reporting and tooling (e.g., Excel, Smartsheet, SharePoint, Power BI; integration with ServiceNow/Jira)
• People leadership experience, including managing analytical or process-focused roles
• Certification such as CQI (Practitioner/Professional), ISO 9001 Lead Auditor, Lean/Six Sigma Green/Black Belt, and PRINCE2/APM are highly valued.

Beyond technical expertise, you are someone who:

• Brings calm, clarity and sound judgement in high-stakes environments
• Challenges constructively while building trusted partnerships
• Raises the bar for quality and governance
• Thrives in structured, data-driven and collaborative settings
• Influences without direct authority, engages confidently with senior accountable stakeholders, and coaches teams to build quality into processes

What You'll Get

Why say yes to this role?

• The opportunity to shape quality at scale across globally recognised qualifications
• Visibility and influence with senior stakeholders and governance boards
• The chance to build resilient systems that directly protect learner outcomes
• Professional growth at the intersection of quality, risk, audit and operational governance
• A collaborative environment that values transparency, rigour and continuous improvement

Additional Information

Participation in out-of-hours work during peak series or major incidents may be required. Occasional travel to operational sites, suppliers and regulator/partner locations.

Ready to Make an Impact?

Apply now and help safeguard the quality, integrity and reliability of qualifications that learners around the world depend on.

Who we are:

At Pearson, our purpose is simple: to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. We believe that every learning opportunity is a chance for a personal breakthrough. We are the world's lifelong learning company. For us, learning isn't just what we do. It's who we are. To learn more: We are Pearson.

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer and a member of E-Verify. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit and business need. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other group protected by law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

If you are an individual with a disability and are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career site as a result of your disability, you may request reasonable accommodations by emailing TalentExperienceGlobalTeam@grp.pearson.com.