AQA Manager | Scotland

Employer: Audit Scotland

Location: Our offices are based in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness however we welcome applications from across the UK

Type: Permanent role

Salary: £49,579 to £54,768 per annum, plus competitive benefits.

Hours: 36.25 hours

Interested in this role?

Are you an experienced qualified external auditor who thrives on making a difference? Are you passionate about helping auditors improve and ensuring public sector audit is delivered to the high-quality standards that the Auditor General for Scotland and Accounts Commission expect? If so, we can offer you the chance to work on our audit quality assurance and improvement activities. You will help to create a better Scotland through ensuring our auditors deliver world class financial, performance and Best Value audit work.

About Audit Scotland

We are Audit Scotland. We're Scotland’s public sector auditor, independent of government. We employ more than 320 talented professionals who know that their work helps ensure the efficient delivery of public services in Scotland. We believe that public money (around £57 billion a year) should be spent wisely.

There's plenty of change ahead, and the need for robust public audit that provides assurance about public spending and helps public services improve is more important than ever. We want to make sure Scotland makes the very best of the opportunities and that change is delivered well – transparent financial reporting and delivering value for money are key to this.

There has never been a more interesting or important time to join us. We offer a rewarding place to work, a supportive and open culture and a wide range of professional development opportunities. Benefits include 42 days of annual leave including public holidays, personal development allowances and flexible working hours. We’ve also been named one of the top 40 workplaces in Scotland and the UK’s fourth best accountancy workplace in the Sunday Times’ 2021 Best Companies awards.

Overall purpose of the role

You will be part of Audit quality and appointments, the independent team within Audit Scotland that aims to increase confidence, understanding, and transparency in the quality of public audit in Scotland and manages the audit appointments for the Auditor General and Accounts Commission.

How you can help us

As a manager, you will play an important role in providing assurance on audit quality to the Auditor General and Accounts Commission. You will:

• Assist in identifying issues of audit quality, including Auditing (Code of Audit Practice, ISAs, and INTOSAI), Ethical and Quality Control Standards.
• Monitor and review audit outputs against the Audit quality framework.
• Make professional, evidence-based judgements and identify potential recommendations.
• Assess the reasonableness of judgements made by fellow audit professionals.
• Establish and maintain relationships with senior staff and audit engagement leads in Audit Scotland and the appointed firms to support the effective improvement of audit quality.
• Contribute to scoping and conduct of thematic audit quality work.
• Draft reports as required to explain complex accounting or auditing issues arising from quality reviews.
• Provide feedback to auditors on audit quality findings.
• Assist in the appointments, procuring and management of audit services.

Specific knowledge and experience

You will be a fully qualified accountant (CIPFA, ICAS, other CCAB, CIMA or equivalent) with practical experience of delivering high-quality audits, ideally in a public sector environment:

• You will have strong technical auditing and accounting skills with public sector expertise.
• You understand the importance of ensuring that the auditors carrying out public audit on behalf of the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission deliver high quality audit work.
• You can prepare balanced findings and make convincing and useful recommendations to improve the quality of public audit in Scotland.
• You are able to challenge the judgements and quality of work performed by engagement leads and other members of the audit teams whose work is subject to review, including the largest and most complex audits.
• You understand the priorities and pressures facing public sector bodies and public sector auditors.

You will:

• You are able to lead on and/or provide valuable and timely input into drafting audit quality reports.
• You can manage external stakeholders to ensure audit quality evidence required under the Audit Quality Framework is available for audit quality reporting.
• Have strong written and oral communication skills, including an ability to explain complex accounting and auditing concepts in an easily understandable manner to a non-accounting audience.
• Be capable of working with minimal supervision and taking sole responsibility for the accuracy and quality of the work product.
• Have effective project and time management skills to complete assignments within the timetable set and meet competing deadlines for the different pieces of work.
• Undertake professional and personal development to maintain technical expertise, meet CPD requirements and enhance your career prospects at Audit Scotland.

What to do next

Click here to complete an application form. If you wish, you can also share your CV. We offer a range of benefits, please visit our careers page for more information.

Our application deadline is Monday 28^th March at midnight.

Diversity and Inclusion

We value the unique perspective a diverse workforce brings to what we do. Therefore, we’re keen to increase representation in our workforce and support progression of minority ethnic groups. We are also a proud disability confident employer.

How we work

We employ more than 320 people in a wide variety of roles, based at our offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness, at sites across Scotland and working from home. This isn’t your typical work from home or work from office type job. We’re flexible about working patterns and we’ve transformed how we deliver high-quality public audit. We support you to work in the ways that achieve the best results for you, your team and the business, including your physical location and how you manage your hours. Put simply, we trust you to do your job, and want you to have the ability to have a rewarding work-life balance and best support your individual circumstances, be that childcare, adult carer responsibilities or managing disabilities.

We welcome applications from across the UK. Some travel to our offices or client sites will be necessary at times, but you don’t need to live in Scotland to work for us.