Enforcement Director

time left to apply End Date: January 10, 2025 (30+ days left to apply)

job requisition id JR1880

Closing Date: 10/01/2025

Group: Legal Group

Management Level: Senior Management Specialist

Job Type: Permanent

Job Description:

About Ofcom

As the UK's communications regulator, we're delivering vital work that helps keep the UK connected and shapes the future of how we'll stay connected with each other.

Our work covers everything from phones and broadband, through to TV, radio, the postal service, and wireless devices. We're also taking on the challenge of making the online world a safer place. And we need people of all backgrounds, skill sets, and experiences to help us achieve our goal of making communications work for everyone.

About the team you'll be part of

The Enforcement team is a core part of the Legal & Enforcement Group, reporting to the General Counsel. We play a critical role in ensuring that the regulation and policy we put in place to protect consumers and citizens is effective. The Enforcement team identifies and responds to non-compliance affecting consumers and competition in the telecommunications, postal, broadcasting and online safety sectors. The Enforcement team works with policy teams across Ofcom, carries out advocacy work with stakeholders and actively enforces the regulatory conditions that Ofcom imposes on regulated providers, as well as enforcing general consumer and competition law. We routinely monitor complaints, analyse evidence and take swift action where we see harm, including opening formal investigations, issuing penalties and seeking redress where appropriate.

The purpose and scope of the role

The Enforcement team is currently led by two Enforcement Directors, and we are now looking to appoint a third Director to lead the team with them. As an Enforcement Director you will jointly be accountable with the other Enforcement Directors for the team-wide portfolio of work, and the overall leadership of the Enforcement function. It is expected that both the substantive work and leadership of the team will require a split of duties due to span of work, however there will need to be continual close collaboration and flexibility in this approach to ensure appropriate coverage across these areas.

Your Key Responsibilities

• Lead the Enforcement team, both in its substantive work and the colleagues in the team, taking responsibility and accountability across the workplan, budgeting, resourcing, colleague development and training, strategy and advocacy.
• Play an active role as core members of both the wider Legal & Enforcement Group leadership team and Ofcom's Senior Leadership Group.
• Oversee and be accountable for all the Enforcement team's work, directing a wide portfolio of matters across multi-disciplinary project teams, and working collaboratively with project managers and specialists to detect and act upon compliance failures and support supervisory functions.
• Build and manage senior relationships with internal and external stakeholders in the industries we regulate, acting as an ambassador for Ofcom.
• Manage risk and overall resourcing on the Enforcement team's portfolio of cases and projects and ensure they are delivered to time, quality and cost.
• Manage the critical points of Ofcom's governance processes and define how Ofcom's enforcement work fits into Ofcom's wider strategy.
• Lead engagement with policy areas and oversee enforcement input to key policy projects, acting as a thought leader and providing advice and guidance to colleagues.

The skills, knowledge and experience you'll need for success

• Experience/understanding of competition, consumer and/or regulatory enforcement: this can include general competition and consumer law enforcement and/or within a regulated industry or government.
• Analytical skills and experience: experience of evidence review, supervisory techniques and legal and/or economic analysis would be an advantage.
• Empowering Development: you will jointly be responsible for leading and shaping the work of the Enforcement team, providing guidance and mentoring appropriate to colleagues' level of experience, and will draw on your own experience of leading teams, running projects, defining scope and workstreams and owning timetable. As part of this you will also be responsible for the line management of senior individuals in the team.
• Close Collaboration: you will work closely with your fellow Enforcement Directors, and will be comfortable contributing fully to the joint leadership of the team and accountability for its output, working in an open, collegiate and collaborative way.
• Owning Accountabilities: you will act as decision-maker in high profile, contentious cases, and will be comfortable both making those decisions and articulating the rationale behind them both internally and externally. You will also lead settlement discussions with senior external stakeholders.
• Channelling Influence: you will lead and contribute at a strategic level to drafting of internal and published documents and decisions which are often subject to scrutiny in the courts. You will need to be comfortable communicating arguments in person to senior colleagues within Ofcom, with senior external stakeholders and with the media, and be prepared to listen, contribute, persuade, and resolve conflicts where they arise.
• Harmonising work: you will be able to build and maintain constructive and productive relationships with internal stakeholders at all levels and engage with senior external stakeholders in a fair and professional way.
• Trailblazing Ideas: you will be able to think creatively about complex and novel problems and develop effective solutions.

Ofcom has a clear mission: to make communications work for everyone. To be able to deliver on this, we want our organisation to reflect the diversity of background, experience, upbringing and thought that exists across the UK. We aim to recruit from the widest pool of candidates possible - no matter your social background, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender or disability.

Where positions are listed as full-time, we remain open to reduced hours, part-time arrangements, job shares, and other flexible working options. From day one, we champion flexible work arrangements to accommodate individual needs.

We also warmly welcome applicants who are returning to the workforce after a break - for whatever reason. If you have taken time away and are ready to rejoin, we look forward to reviewing your application.

Our recruitment processes prioritise accessibility and inclusivity. If you need information in an alternative format or have specific preferences, please contact our recruitment team at or call .

As a Disability Confident employer, we offer interviews to disabled applicants who meet essential criteria for advertised roles.