Senior Regulation Managers

Salary: £56,209– £58,820 plus generous Civil Service defined benefit pension. Fixed term contract: 18 months. Location: Bristol

About the role

We are looking for a number of Senior Regulation Managers to work across the Regulation directorate on a wide range of complex and high-impact regulatory activity. This is an agile role that supports the OfS’s statutory functions and plays a critical part in protecting the interests of students and maintaining confidence in the higher education sector. Senior Regulation Managers work across multiple projects over time, providing leadership, oversight, and expert judgement to support effective, proportionate, and evidence-based regulation.

You may be involved in:

• Leading, overseeing and assessing provider applications for registration, degree awarding powers, and university title
• Monitoring and investigating provider compliance with registration conditions, using regulatory intelligence to assess risk and determine appropriate interventions
• Overseeing and delivering quality and standards assessments and contributing to related policy and regulatory developments
• Overseeing work on financial sustainability, market exit, and student protection
• Leading the delivery of funded programmes and initiatives
• Driving improvements to internal systems and services that support providers
• Supporting and overseeing complaints-handling work, including a future free speech complaints scheme

You will provide leadership within and across teams, managing complex casework, supporting colleagues, and ensuring delivery against the OfS business plan. The role involves working closely with internal and external stakeholders, managing sensitive or high-risk issues with professionalism and sound judgement. You will lead the development of clear, robust, and evidence-based recommendations to support regulatory decision-making and consistent delivery. How we do things is as important to us as what we do, and your approach will be grounded in our strategic attitudes being ambitious, collaborative, vigilant, and vocal.

About you

While you may not have worked previously in a regulator, you will be interested in taking on a role where your judgement, leadership, and analytical skills help protect students and support confidence in the higher education sector.

Person Specification (essential criteria)

• Lead and manage a flexible team of staff, ensuring their wellbeing, performance and development.
• Understand and interpret the OfS’s regulatory framework and use this to undertake assessments, risk assessments, and interventions; implement and communicate aspects of the regulatory framework and support teams to do this.
• Reach and convey reliable and robust judgements on the basis of complex and, at times, imperfect information and articulate the OfS’s approach clearly to providers.
• Work with high levels of complexity and ambiguity.
• Think broadly about the theory and practice of regulation.
• Adopt a systems approach to service design and delivery.
• Work collaboratively and flexibly to deliver the team’s functions.
• Undertake professional line management and activity management in a complex environment through a matrix structure.
• Effectively communicate policies and requirements clearly when working in teams and teams that include external members.
• Produce clear written documentation to comply with the OfS’s tone of voice guidance.

Senior Regulation Managers may work across different areas over time but this role may be suited to candidates who have experience of, or a strong interest in, one or more of the following core areas:

Quality assessment

Quality assessment supports the OfS’s responsibilities for safeguarding academic quality and standards. This work involves leading structured assessment processes, working closely with external academic assessors, and producing clear, high-quality, evidence-based reports to inform regulatory decisions. It is well suited to those who are confident engaging with both academic and professional stakeholders, synthesising complex evidence, and exercising judgement in assessments that directly affect student outcomes. This work requires a willingness to undertake 4–6 site visits per year (typically over two consecutive days).

Complaints

Complaints work involves overseeing the assessment of concerns raised within a regulated framework and ensuring fair, balanced, and well-reasoned outcomes. This area requires careful handling of detailed evidence, a strong understanding of regulatory or statutory frameworks, and the ability to manage challenging or sensitive cases with professionalism and impartiality. The work plays a key role in maintaining trust in regulatory processes and protecting students’ interests.

Across all areas, you will contribute senior-level insight, support consistent and proportionate regulatory delivery, and help strengthen how regulation is designed and implemented across the OfS.

Benefits and flexibility

We value diversity and the wealth of perspectives, experience and ideas that it brings to our work, and we strive to embed equality of opportunity in everything we do. Flexibility is important to the OfS, as we recognise that it can enable people to work more effectively. A set of organisation-wide principles shape our approach to flexible and hybrid working, which our teams then use as guidance on how they deliver their business goals. This would usually mean working from the office for two to three days in a typical week. To attract the widest possible field of qualified applicants, flexible working, for example job share and part-time working, apply to this role. In addition, our Total Reward Framework offers a range of benefits to suit your way of life. These include comprehensive learning and development, annual leave starting at 25 days per year (plus public holidays), access to the highly regarded Civil Service pension scheme and a variety of health benefits.

Reasonable adjustments

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is accessible to everyone. If you require any reasonable adjustments to support you through the application stage, please contact us at recruitmentteam@officeforstudents.org.uk and we will be happy to help.