Lead Compliance Officer

AKG UK; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

AKG UK is seeking a Lead Compliance Officer to lead the contract-specific compliance functions, ensuring claims and supporting evidence are reviewed accurately against contract requirements.

You will manage the compliance team day-to-day, drive risk-based validation, maintain controls and support the claims process in partnership with Finance, Operations and Employer Engagement. Strong leadership and governance are essential.

Qualifications

• Experience leading a compliance/evidence-review function.
• Experience managing staff, workload and performance.
• Strong evidence-review and defensible decision-making.
• Experience with risk-based controls and exception processes.
• Ability to translate requirements into operational practice.
• Strong analytical skills and high attention to detail.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the contract's compliance team.
• Oversee validation of employer claim packs against records and funded periods.
• Ensure checks on participant details, hours, dates and changes.
• Maintain validation methodology, checklists and guidance.
• Escalate governance issues and support audits.
• Identify improvements and automate validation processes where possible.
• Maintain data protection and complete audit trails.

Skills

Leadership

People management

Evidence-review

Risk-based controls

Contractual interpretation

Analytical skills

Attention to detail

Communication

Organization/prioritisation

Integrity/independence

Stakeholder management

Payroll/employee evidence

Process improvement

Job description

The Lead Compliance Officer is responsible for leading and managing a contract specific compliance function, ensuring claims and supporting evidence are reviewed accurately, consistently and independently against approved contract requirements before claims progress to financial approval.

The role provides day-to-day leadership of the contract’s compliance team, ensuring effective workload management, risk identification, compliance decision-making and escalation. The Lead Compliance Officer will ensure that appropriate controls are consistently applied and that validation decisions are evidence based, clearly documented and defensible.

The role will work closely with Finance, Operations and Employer Engagement to ensure the contract claims process is robust, efficient and compliant with agreed requirements.

Key Relationships/Interactions

Internal

• Claims & Compliance Manager
• Compliance Officers
• Operational Delivery Teams
• Shared Services

External

• Commissioners and funding bodies
• External auditors
• Employers, partners and stakeholders

Key Responsibilities

• Leadership and People Management
• Lead, manage and develop the contract’s compliance team.
• Allocate validation workloads effectively to ensure claims are processed within agreed timescales.
• Monitor team productivity, quality, accuracy and adherence to agreed procedures and controls.
• Provide regular supervision, feedback, coaching and support to team members.
• Identify and address training and development needs within the team.
• Support recruitment, induction and ongoing development of Compliance Officers as the function grows.
• Manage individual performance in line with organisational policies and procedures.
• Build a culture of accuracy, accountability, professional challenge and continuous improvement.
• Claims Validation and Compliance
  • Oversee the review of employer claim packs against approved employer, placement and participant records and the relevant funded period.
  • Ensure appropriate checks are undertaken on participant details, funded periods, hours, start dates, changes and leaver information.
  • Ensure wage and supporting evidence is reviewed against the agreed evidence standard.
  • Ensure onboarding-cost evidence is assessed for participant linkage, business rationale, eligibility and potential duplicate funding.
  • Ensure missing, inconsistent, unsupported or potentially ineligible evidence is identified and appropriately queried.
  • Ensure validation decisions, evidence reviewed, dates, exceptions and rationale are accurately recorded and retrievable.
  • Monitor claim volumes, turnaround times, query rates, rejection rates and outstanding exceptions.
• Compliance Controls, Risk and Quality
  • Maintain and continuously improve the validation methodology, checklists and working guidance in line with contract requirements.
  • Identify recurring evidence failures, control weaknesses, employer risks and emerging compliance issues.
  • Maintain an appropriate risk and RAG assessment of employers, claims and recurring issues.
  • Ensure required controls and segregation of duties are consistently applied.
  • Lead corrective-action follow-up arising from claims validation activity.
  • Monitor trends and root causes and recommend preventative controls where recurring issues are identified.
• Escalation and Governance
• Lead the timely escalation of suspected fraud, altered evidence, serious non-compliance, material evidence concerns and repeated control failures.
• Escalate significant risks and emerging themes to the Claims and Compliance Manager.
• Provide information on validation activity, exceptions, risks, trends and team performance.
• Support audit and assurance requests by ensuring evidence and validation decisions are complete, retrievable and defensible.
• Continuous Improvement and Process Development
  • Identify opportunities to improve the efficiency, consistency and effectiveness of the claims validation process.
  • Work effectively with colleagues across the business to resolve recurring issues and strengthen controls.
  • Support the development and implementation of automated or technology-enabled validation processes where appropriate.
  • Use validation data and trends to identify opportunities to reduce avoidable queries and control failures.
• Data Protection, Information Security and Audit Trail
• Ensure personal data is handled securely and in accordance with requirements.
• Ensure complete and accurate audit trails are maintained across all validation activity.
• Promote appropriate information security and confidentiality practices across the team.
• Ensure evidence and validation decisions can be readily retrieved and demonstrated.

Essential/Desirable Skills, Knowledge and Experience

• Experience leading or managing a quality, compliance, assurance, audit, claims validation, funding assurance or comparable evidence-review function.
• Experience managing and developing staff, including workload allocation, performance management and coaching.
• Strong evidence-review and investigative skills with the ability to make and document defensible decisions.
• Experience operating risk-based controls and exception processes.
• Ability to interpret contractual, programme or procedural requirements and translate them into consistent operational practice.
• Strong analytical skills and excellent attention to detail.
• Confidence managing and escalating material compliance concerns.
• Ability to balance operational throughput with control quality and risk management.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong organisational and prioritisation skills.
• High levels of integrity, professional judgement and objectivity.
• Ability to build effective relationships while maintaining appropriate professional challenge and independence.
• Experience of government-funded programmes or DWP contracts.
• Experience of payroll, wage or employment evidence.
• Counter-fraud, audit, quality-assurance or grant-validation experience.
• Experience managing high-volume claims, validation or compliance processes.
• Experience of process improvement, automation or technology-enabled controls.

Compliance

• It is the responsibility of all staff to abide by organisational policies to ensure compliance with relevant standards e.g. ISO 27001 (Information Security), ISO 9001 (Quality) and ISO 14001 (Environmental) as well as adhering to statutory duties in relation to safeguarding, Prevent and health and safety.

Inclusive Recruitment and Accessibility

• AKG UK is committed to creating an inclusive and accessible recruitment process. We welcome applications from candidates with a range of backgrounds, experiences and working styles. Candidates are encouraged to let us know if they require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process. Applicants do not need to meet every desirable criterion to apply; we are interested in relevant skills, potential and values alignment as well as direct experience.