About the job

Job summary

About the Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA)

We are an executive agency of His Majesty’s Treasury (HM Treasury), established in April 2015 to improve the quality of internal audit provided to central government. 

Most of the Agency’s people are professionally qualified internal auditors, accountants or investigators. 

Many are also specialists in areas including counter fraud, project management, digital and commercial audit. 

We lead both the Government Internal Audit Profession and the Government Internal Audit Function. 

Our workforce brings with it a unique depth of experience gained in a wide range of government departments, related bodies and other sectors. 

This enables us to offer a high-quality service based on cross-government insight and a strong understanding of our customers’ business. 

In GIAA, we aim to be a great place to work and to ensure that we have the capability and capacity to make even more of a significant contribution to achieving A Brilliant Civil Service over the coming years. 

Our initial focus was on becoming “a single audit practice”. We are now focused on taking GIAA to the next level so we can provide better insights and better outcomes for government.

Job description

Our Senior Auditors are the essential day-to-day contacts for our clients. 

With access to high profile work, you will work alongside key decision makers, audit specialists and private sector contractors in the Agency, challenging and developing your skills and ensuring we meet our customers’ expectations. 

Your ability to build good relationships with a variety of stakeholders whilst delivering efficient, robust audit work is fundamental to the success of the Agency’s relationship with our clients.  

We value all our employees and will offer you support in maintaining and building your professional career through technical training, coaching and development opportunities. 

We provide internal audit services and support for the UK government. Our customers include all ministerial departments and many non-ministerial departments, agencies and public bodies. 

At GIAA we are inspired by innovation, we are forward looking, and we work together to embed new ideas, ways of working, and technologies to keep our thinking and work fresh, modern, and effective. 

We have recently been nominated as a top 5 winner in the Government Category for the 2023 Inspiring Workplaces Awards and for ‘Outstanding Team’ and ‘Inspirational Leader’ at the IIA Audit and Risk Awards. 

This is an exciting time to join the GIAA. The introduction of our Audit Response Team (ART), alongside our embedded customer facing teams means we can elevate our impact across UK central government by ensuring we are responsive and agile whilst also continuing to meet our customers’ needs.  We are recruiting a number of roles for both our customer facing and audit response teams. 

Audit Response Team

For roles in our audit Response Team (ART), you will work to deliver a portfolio of audits across a number of our customers, collaborating closely with our customer teams. As a member of our ART team, you will also have access to dedicated, bespoke development programmes to support you to get up to speed, and you’ll work closely with all our high-performing and highly supportive teams where we you will have the opportunity to expand and enrich your skills.  

Customer Facing Team

For our customer facing roles you will work closely with a single customer developing a detailed and deep understanding of your customer’s activity, learning about their business. Identifying key stakeholders and building effective and productive relationships are also vital aspects for these roles. 

Successful candidates may be offered the opportunity to work in our specialist audit teams (Digital, Data & Technology, Programme & Project Management, Commercial, Grants and Data Analytics) if, during the recruitment process, they're identified as having the relevant skills and experience. 

Whichever pathway you choose, these roles are an ideal opportunity for career development, with opportunities for progression within the Agency and the wider civil service, enabling you to develop a broad career base gaining experience of building and maintaining strategic relationships at the most senior levels. 

The potential variety and contribution made through these roles across government departments is unparalleled. We are using a single recruitment process for both our customer facing and audit response team roles. You will be asked your preference at Interview.

Senior Auditor Responsibilities

• Be an effective team member, supporting wider GIAA delivery by working constructively and flexibly with colleagues to deliver appropriate outcomes.
• Manage your own time and resource effectively and efficiently; proactively identify, expect, and take ownership of issues that could impact on the delivery of your and the wider teams’ objectives and provides solutions and options ahead of deadlines.
• Provide and deliver clear and accurate reports that meet the requirements of our customers and carry out activities to ensure that agreed management actions are completed.
• Be accountable for delivery of a portfolio of audits, working on more than one assignment at once, possibly for different clients, delivering to budget and quality expectations, complying with GIAA methodology, using our IT audit software system.
• Scope audit assignments, including drafting terms of reference, testing strategies, fieldwork plans, reporting timetables and focus work on identified risks; single audit methodology and audit management software. 

 Senior Auditor Key Skills

• To apply your professional knowledge and expertise to meet the ‘Responsibilities’ outlined in this application pack.
• To be a trusted adviser for our customers, holding responsibility for working level relationships with our customers.
• Actively work with others, sharing expertise and experience, coaching juniors and peers and helping the Agency develop its professional practice.
• Look to continuously improve your own development and performance and that of the wider team, participating in training and broader corporate activities as required.
• Respond positively to team and departmental changes, being an ambassador for the Agency as it develops.
• Be highly organised, actively monitoring audit deliverables to ensure high quality services are delivered to agreed time scales, of excellent quality and meet resource constraints.
• Be a team player, able to coach and develop others.

Person specification

You will be required to write a statement of suitability of up to 750 words setting out how your skills and experience meet the following criteria: 

1. Able to demonstrate strong understanding of governance, risk management, control and assurance issues.
2. A strong, analytical thinker and problem solver who is able to plan out what needs to be done within tight deadlines and under minimal supervision..
3. An effective communicator with excellent interpersonal skills, able to work collaboratively with a wide range of business and corporate stakeholders at all levels across an organisation.
4. Able to influence using evidence and negotiation rather than the exercise of authority, demonstrating resilience and tact in the face of challenging circumstances.
5. Experience of collecting and providing accurate, unbiased, relevant and sufficient information to support conclusions.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,900, Government Internal Audit Agency contributes £12,123 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Strengths, Experience and Technical skills.

Recruitment Timeline

Closing date: 07 August 2024

Shortlisting: w/c 12 August 2024

Interviews: End of August / Early September 2024

This timeline is indicative and may be subject to change. We will inform you if there is a substantial change to the recruitment timeline. 

If your contact details change at any time during the selection process, please ensure you update your Civil Service Jobs profile. 

Please note that only applications submitted through Civil Service Jobs will be accepted.

Eligibility Statement

A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role in the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5 year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government. Checks will be performed as part of pre-employment checks in line with this. 

Everyone working with government assets must complete Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) checks. Additionally, individuals appointed to the Treasury group will be subject to National Security Vetting. The level of security vetting required for this role is Security Check (SC).  

To allow for meaningful checks to be carried out, applicants will need to have lived in the UK for at least 3 out of the past 5 years. In exceptional circumstances, a lack of residency would not be a bar to security clearance however the Department will need to consider eligibility on a case by case basis once the advert closing date has passed.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.