Audit and Assurance - Digital Assurance - Manager

At PwC, our people in audit and assurance focus on providing independent and objective assessments of financial statements, internal controls, and other assurable information enhancing the credibility and reliability of this information with a variety of stakeholders. They evaluate compliance with regulations including assessing governance and risk management processes and related controls. In digital assurance at PwC, you will focus on providing assurance services over clients' digital environment, including processes and controls, cyber security measures, data and AI systems, and their associated governance, to help organisations and their stakeholders build trust in their technology while complying with relevant regulations.Enhancing your leadership style, you motivate, develop and inspire others to deliver quality. You are responsible for coaching, leveraging team member’s unique strengths, and managing performance to deliver on client expectations. With your growing knowledge of how business works, you play an important role in identifying opportunities that contribute to the success of our Firm. You are expected to lead with integrity and authenticity, articulating our purpose and values in a meaningful way. You embrace technology and innovation to enhance your delivery and encourage others to do the same.

Skills

Examples of the skills, knowledge, and experiences you need to lead and deliver value at this level include but are not limited to:

• Analyse and identify the linkages and interactions between the component parts of an entire system.
• Take ownership of projects, ensuring their successful planning, budgeting, execution, and completion.
• Partner with team leadership to ensure collective ownership of quality, timelines, and deliverables.
• Develop skills outside your comfort zone, and encourage others to do the same.
• Effectively mentor others.
• Use the review of work as an opportunity to deepen the expertise of team members.
• Address conflicts or issues, engaging in difficult conversations with clients, team members and other stakeholders, escalating where appropriate.
• Uphold and reinforce professional and technical standards (e.g. refer to specific PwC tax and audit guidance), the Firm's code of conduct, and independence requirements.
  

Introduction

Trust is a valuable commodity. It is not given or kept easily. And when it comes to trust, what matters to stakeholders is changing. They want to know that companies are who they say they are, and do what they say they do. That is why today, organisations are being judged on more than financial performance, with reporting on other areas playing a more important role in building stakeholder trust.Independent, high-quality assurance is increasingly expected. Corporate reporting remains the first port of call for investors trying to understand business performance and prospects – and the risks associated with them. This role will see you working on a variety of challenging, career-advancing non-financial reporting assurance assignments.PwCs UK Audit business comprises over 6,000 staff across 19 offices and includes both our financial and non-financial audit businesses. PwC's Stakeholder Assurance team provides independent non-financial audit services to enhance the trust and transparency in non-financial reporting, Regulatory and Third Party assurance.This is an exciting time to be part of Stakeholder Assurance, as we grow our services to meet the explosion of demand across our extensive audit client base.

Your role

The role in Stakeholder Assurance will mainly focus on developing and delivering our non-financial reporting products,

though individuals should expect to deliver non-financial assurance more broadly, including Third Party assurance and Regulatory assurance

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Non-financial reporting and other areas where stakeholders of our clients are increasingly seeking to build trust and provide transparency.With the increasing focus on climate change and sustainability at our clients and across wider society, this role offers you the opportunity to be at the forefront of developing the Firm’s audit response to climate change and helping our clients build trust in those.Across all areas of your work you will be encouraged to identify and utilise technology driven solutions to continuously evolve the way we work.A role in Stakeholder Assurance provides successful individuals with the opportunity to:

• Be at the forefront of innovation in reporting and assurance, providing a broad and differentiating experience to the typical financial auditor;
• Have variety in what you do, working across all three Stakeholder Assurance propositions and an even broader set of products, in an area that constantly evolves in response to our clients evolving needs and business risks;
• Develop and progress, in a rapidly growing area of our business;
• Develop client proposals and propositions more broadly; and
• Spend every day working on our purpose, to build trust in society and solve important problems.
  

You’ll be constantly learning and your ideas will be welcomed in an atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork.

About You

We’re looking for someone who is passionate about the role assurance plays, and who can leverage their experience to challenge existing reporting and build PwCs profile and position in the marketplace. You will have experience in understanding an organisation’s risks, risk management priorities, controls, regulatory environment, data, reporting, and the diverse needs of its critical stakeholders. This experience could be gained through external audit, internal audit or risk management.

Responsibilities

Building on and utilising your previous audit and assurance skills and experience, your responsibilities will include:

• Understanding of complex client processes and designing and developing suites of assurance work over them;
• Leading the planning and delivery of assurance or similar assignments for a range of governance, ITGC, risk, regulatory, operational and financial purposes;
• Building and maintaining effective working relationships with clients;
• Managing teams to deliver a project both on time and on budget;
• Coaching and developing junior team members;
• Conducting work in accordance with a range of assurance standards;
• Developing and supporting new opportunities and propositions; and
• Building a network of external contacts through attending external and PwC hosted events.
  

Given the nature of our business you may be required from time to time to work on Audits outside of those mentioned above including but not limited to financial audits.

• We are looking for an extremely self-motivated individual who will relish the opportunity to join a growing part of the PwC business, using their skills in developing key internal relationships.
• Understand the process workflow related to work requests from initiation through completion, understand how workflow is managed within the firm's workflow management tool, understand optimal and required manner in which to document results of work performed.
• He/she will be responsible for overseeing their team members' performance of work in these areas, monitoring workload, timelines and budgets for the work being performed.
• The role provides an opportunity for the individual to interact with territory audit teams to articulate the objectives and testing results.
• The individual should have excellent communication (written and verbal) skills and should be able to work with global teams independently with minimal supervision.
• The individual should have the ability to work effectively under pressure without compromising professional standards or quality of the work being performed.
  

Candidates would be required to perform and manage engagements / expectations while training / coaching team members.

Essential Skills And Experience

To succeed in the team, you will have a demonstrable skills and experience as follows:

• Credential (Mandate):
  

Chartered Accountant or international equivalent with minimum 4 years of relevant experience post qualification. Articleship experience - 3+ years of mandatory articleship experience for qualified Chartered Accountants
orNon-CA but CISA certified with minimum 7 years of relevant experience

• Experience in Engagement Planning & Management.
• Have an understanding of Designing, testing or monitoring of Internal controls and SOX compliance.
• Have deep knowledge and experience of testing ITGCs, ITACs and Business Process controls. As part of the respective team, members will assist territory engagement teams with testing of IT general controls, Automated Controls and Manual controls activities. These activities will primarily relate to the following cycles / domains:r`
• Change management, Program development
• Logical access (i.e., user administration, access recertification)
• Computer operations (i.e., problem management, batch processing, back-ups)
• Design effectiveness/Operating effectiveness - Business Process cycles (Purchase to Payable; Revenue & Receivables; Inventory; Payroll; Treasury).
• IT Application controls
• Assurance experience, including performing walkthroughs and evaluating controls;
• Experience in SOC 1 & SOC 2 testing and reporting/ SOX 404
• The ability to apply independent judgement during engagements and to support conclusions reached by management along with the ability to challenge and escalate issues effectively.
• Identifying and effectively reporting issues and recommendations for improvement to clients;
• Perform quality review of the work before delivering to the client. Passion for delivering and promoting quality in all aspects of your work and applying professional scepticism.
• Market development, including experience of identifying opportunities, building and managing client relationships, leading / being involved with tenders and/or significant client pitches;
• Strong business awareness, sound reporting and documentation skills and the ability to work under your own initiative;
• A willingness to learn new skills and help develop and innovate new client propositions; and
• Budgeting and managing project finances.
• Knowledge and understanding of some key non-financial assurance reporting and assurance, standards.
• Working flexibly across a variety of multi-location teams.