Assistant Head of Legal
Salary or salary range: £91,697 + £12,000 additional allowance (and London allowance of £3,566 where relevant)
Contract type: Full-time
Location of position: Bristol or London
Application deadline: 5pm, Monday 20 May
The OfS is the statutory regulator for higher education in England. This is an exciting time to join a rapidly transforming organisation that works to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives and careers. We do so by regulating the higher education providers on our register to make sure they are delivering high quality courses and positive outcomes for their students; where they are not, we take action. The higher education sector in England is complex and diverse and the OfS’s approach to regulation recognises this. Our new strategy signals a shift from an organisation in a start-up phase to an established regulator that understands its regulatory tools and how best to use them to shape incentives across the sector we regulate.
We are now seeking an Assistant Head of Legal to lead on provision of legal advice and support for a broad range of legal matters relevant to the OfS’s functions. The nature of our work provides genuine intellectual stimulation, with the nature of the OfS’s relative youth as a regulator providing significant exposure to novel and complex legal matters which enable us to drive positive outcomes for students throughout England. You will work across the full range of the OfS’s remit to provide the organisation with robust and helpful legal advice to support effective decision making across all the tools we have at our disposal. You will also have a key leadership role within the legal function, supporting the Head of Legal Services across a range of projects and providing management oversight to a number of our legal team.
The successful candidate will have significant legal experience dealing with many legal practice areas related to the application of UK public and regulatory law along with a successful track record as a leader of people and able to demonstrate an ability to build, develop and deliver exceptional results through teams across an organisation. You will be highly effective at engaging and influencing with internal stakeholders at the most senior levels. You will be comfortable making complex risk-based decisions, often in novel circumstances, and will be able to quickly grasp the regulatory and legal frameworks under which the OfS carries out its duties. How we do things is as important to us as what we do and your approach will be underpinned by our values of Ambition, Openness, Learning and Diversity.