Lead Corporate Strategist, Edinburgh

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Salary: National – ranging from £57,600 – £72,000 and London from £63,300 – £80,000 per annum

Are you a strategic thinker that wants exposure to executive level decision making?

The team/department

We inform and drive the delivery of the FCA's Strategy and provide central oversight of delivery on behalf of our Executive Committee and the Board. We facilitate prioritisation and business planning decisions and ensure the organisation measures and reports its performance against agreed outcomes. Our focus for 2024 is developing the next phase of the FCA’s Strategy.

We have a permanent opportunity at Lead Associate level for a strategic thinker who wants exposure to executive level decision making and to develop a broad view of all of the FCA's work.

What you will be doing (the role)

You will play a leading role in the development of the next phase of the FCA’s Strategy. As we develop our next phase, you will play a vital role in providing strategic coordination and oversight across the development of our next multi-year strategy, ensuring alignment between our organisational strategic intent and delivery activities. You will provide advice and support to senior leaders and across the strategy 25 programme. You will help colleagues to understand our priorities and help to prepare the organisation to effectively support the delivery of the next strategy.

Your ability to engage with colleagues of all levels is crucial to success in this role. You will develop and maintain close working relationships with colleagues in HR, Communications, Finance, Economics, Risk and Compliance Oversight. You will also need to influence senior stakeholders as well as mentor and oversee the work of more junior members of the department.

What you will get from the role

Your work will be both varied and challenging. You will have a rare opportunity to understand and help shape the FCA’s strategic direction. You and your outputs will have a high exposure across the FCA. You will work closely with a wide range of internal colleagues, including senior FCA decision makers. You will have excellent opportunities to develop knowledge of the breadth of work across the FCA and how strategic decisions are made. You will contribute to setting high quality strategic outcomes that help shape the running of the organisation. You will work in a supportive and intellectually challenging environment, with a strong focus on continuous improvement.

Our competitive flexible benefits scheme gives you the opportunity to create a personalised benefits package, tailored to suit your lifecycle. You can use this allowance to purchase additional benefits such as dental or cycle to work or you have the option to top up your base salary by taking this as cash.

Core benefits that you will receive as standard are:

1. 25 days holiday per year plus bank holidays
2. Private healthcare with Bupa
3. A non-contributory Pension of at least 8% of basic salary each month (there are several contribution levels that increase depending on your age – up to 12% a month once you reach age 35)
4. Life assurance of eight times your basic salary
5. Income protection

We support hybrid working, which means you will be able to work from home up to 60% of the time over a month with the remainder of your time in one of our three office locations.

The skills and experience you will have

Minimum:

1. Experience in corporate strategy development and strategic planning in a regulator, public organisation or in financial services
2. Track record and proven experience of delivering high profile projects influencing stakeholders at different levels
3. Demonstrable experience of working in agile environments
4. Evidence of strong analytical skills, with the ability to explain complex issues succinctly and with clarity, both in writing and orally
5. Ability to identify and analyse key issues facing consumers and markets, as well the factors influencing them, to provide advice on the FCA’s strategic direction
6. Strong presentation, facilitation and stakeholder management skills
7. Ability to make logical and timely decisions, cutting through complexity and seeing the big picture
8. Capable of managing a variety of competing tasks and issues, prioritising appropriately and escalating where necessary, showing initiative and ability to bring conceptual thinking to life. Ability to work well under pressure and deliver work to agreed standard within tight deadlines
9. Can contribute to setting the strategic direction and link FCA priorities to individual objectives. Proven ability to navigate adaptive challenges
10. Ability to work actively with others to achieve outcomes in both formal and informal teams

About the FCA

The FCA regulates the conduct of 50,000 firms in the UK to ensure our financial markets are honest, fair and competitive. We do this to make sure markets work well for individuals, businesses and the economy as a whole. For more information on what we do, our three-year strategy can be found here.

The FCA's Values & Diversity

Our ambition is to cultivate a culture of inclusion for all employees that respects their individual strengths, views, and experiences. We believe that our differences and similarities enable us to be a better organisation – one that makes better decisions, drives innovation, and delivers better regulation.

The FCA is committed to achieving greater diversity across all levels of the organisations. Given this, we particularly welcome applications from men, disabled and minority ethnic candidates for our role.

We welcome applications from candidates who are looking for flexible arrangements. Many of our staff work flexibly including working part-time, staggered hours, and job shares. We can’t promise to give you exactly what you want but we won’t judge you for asking.

Multi-location

As part of the FCA’s ongoing commitment to develop our national presence, most of our vacancies are now open to working in our Edinburgh, Leeds, or London offices. This means that as part of the application process you will be able to select your preference of which office location you would like to work from.

Useful information

Applications for this role close at midnight on Wednesday 10th July 2024.

This role is graded as Lead Associate – Regulatory.

This role is available on a permanent basis.

We are recruiting for three Lead Associates in the Strategy department; your application may also be considered across all roles.

If you are interested in learning more about the role please contact:

For internal applicants, please contact Melanie Dubock.

For external applicants, please contact Beth Haydon.

What to expect from our interview process

The process will involve a technical/competency-based interview and potential case study exercise with potential for a follow-up informal interview.

Application support

We want to remove any possible barriers and are committed to providing a wide range of reasonable adjustments so that you can keep the focus on your conversations and be at your best.

If you have an accessibility requirement, disability, or condition that means you might require changes to the recruitment process, please contact your recruiter to discuss this further. Our aim is to make your application as easy and comfortable as possible, and your recruiter will be happy to work with you to make any necessary arrangements where possible.