Senior Regulation Manager

Job summary

About Us

We are an arm’s length body of the Welsh Government, responsible for the strategy, funding and oversight of:

• further education
• higher education including research and innovation;
• apprenticeships
• adult community learning; and local authority maintained school sixth forms.

We work in close collaboration with our partners to enable a tertiary education and research system which is centred around the needs of learners; society; and economy with excellence, equality and engagement at its heart.

Our values really matter to us, they help shape the culture of our organisation:

• Dysgu (to learn; to teach; to educate) - learning is at the heart of everything we do. We believe curiosity fuels innovation and helps expand our horizons.
• Cydweithio (to work together; to collaborate; to co-operate) - we can achieve far more together than we ever could alone.
• Cynnwys Pawb (to include everyone; to involve everyone) - we are passionate about inclusion, seeking to create the right conditions for everyone to achieve their full potential.
• Rhagori (to exceed; to excel) - we have high aspirations for tertiary education and research in Wales and always set high standards for ourselves to be the best we can be.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and accredited as a Living Wage employer.

Location

Our headquarters is in 2, Capital Quarter, Cardiff, which has been specifically designed to meet our needs. This is where most colleagues will meet to collaborate, both with each other and with stakeholders.

As we operate across Wales, we also have limited office and collaboration space in Welsh Government offices in Llandudno Junction, Aberystwyth, Swansea and Merthyr Tydfil.

Main Purpose of the Job

To lead the day‑to‑day operational delivery of Medr’s regulatory functions under the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022 and other associated regulations.

The role manages Medr’s annual regulatory cycle, oversees regulatory casework and decision‑support processes, and ensures that providers meet conditions through proportionate and risk‑based oversight.

The postholder manages regulation officers and ensures the consistency, quality and timeliness of regulatory work so that Medr delivers its statutory responsibilities effectively.

Job description

What you'll be doing

• Leading the day‑to‑day delivery of Medr’s regulatory processes, ensuring they are completed accurately, proportionately and on time.
• Building and maintaining constructive working relationships with providers, Welsh Government and other partners.
• Coordinating the annual regulatory cycle, including monitoring, evidence reviews, compliance checks, and issue‑resolution processes.
• Managing and supporting Regulation Officers, providing direction, quality assurance, and coaching on complex or sensitive regulatory cases.
• Ensuring that all regulatory decisions and actions are documented to a high standard, meeting governance and audit requirements.
• Preparing summaries, briefings and recommendations for senior management and Medr’s Board.
• Managing escalated issues, identifying risks, and determining when matters should be referred upwards.
• Working with colleagues across Medr to maintain consistency of regulatory interpretation and approach.
• Identifying opportunities to improve processes, templates, guidance or data handling to support clearer and more efficient regulation.

Key Challenges

• Ensuring regulatory processes are applied consistently, proportionately and within required timeframes across diverse provider types.
• Balancing operational delivery with ongoing process improvements and changing regulatory expectations.
• Managing staff capacity, competing demands and multiple concurrent regulatory cases.
• Supporting providers to understand and meet their regulatory obligations while maintaining clear expectations around compliance.
• Exercising sound judgement when managing escalation or higher‑risk casework, ensuring clear documentation and effective onward referral.
• Keeping up to date with emerging regulatory issues, sector developments and legislative requirements.

About your team

You will join the Regulation Directorate, which ensures that tertiary education providers in Wales meet Medr’s regulatory requirements and maintain high standards. The team plays a critical role in protecting learners and public investment by overseeing compliance with a range of conditions, promoting confidence in the sector.

Our work spans a wide range of responsibilities, including monitoring and ensuring compliance, responding to issues, and advising on improvements that strengthen accountability and learner outcomes. We work collaboratively with colleagues across Medr and with external partners to apply regulation consistently and fairly, helping to build a strong and sustainable tertiary education system.

You will join a growing team including the Head of Provider Compliance, a Regulation Manager and two Regulation Officers.

About your line manager

Andrew Pickford, Head of Provider Compliance

Person specification

What you'll bring

Attributes

• Accountable - Takes ownership of tasks and responsibilities, ensuring that commitments are met and results are delivered with integrity and reliability.
• Drive - Demonstrates a strong commitment to achieving results, showing determination, initiative, and a willingness to take necessary actions to meet goals
• Motivating- Inspires and energises others to perform at their best, encouraging enthusiasm, engagement, and commitment towards shared goals and objectives.
• Resilient - Maintains focus, composure, and effectiveness in the face of challenges, pressures, and adversity, bouncing back quickly from setbacks.

Experience

• You must have substantial experience working directly for a regulator or statutory assurance body (e.g., inspection, oversight, audit), in a role with clear responsibility for regulating external organisations and applying statutory or rule‑based requirements.
• You must have substantial experience making regulatory judgements on individual cases, using evidence and risk to produce clear, well‑reasoned recommendations that directly inform formal regulatory decisions.
• Experience of building and maintaining constructive working relationships with external stakeholders in a regulatory setting.

Welsh Language requirements

We have evaluated that the Welsh language requirements for this post are:

Desirable

Welsh desirable means that while having Welsh language skills is useful for the role, it is not an assessment criterion, so it won’t disadvantage you during recruitment if you don’t currently possess these skills.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £49,301, Medr contributes £14,282 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Your Perks and Benefits

We recognise the importance of looking after ourselves in work and in life, so in recognition of this we provide:

• 34 days annual leave a year (pro rata)
• An environment that embraces work life balance.
• A culture that celebrates diversity and welcomes everyone.
• Dedicated well-being time to all our people each week.
• A Cycle to Work Scheme to make owning a bicycle more affordable.

Additional Support when you need it

We know that sometimes you may face challenges or life events that mean you need additional support.

• We provide a comprehensive employee assistance programme with remote access to resources and in person support whenever required.
• We have a special leave policy ensuring everyone in the organisation receives the support they need during difficult times.

More than just a workplace

• You will be entitled to take 5 days paid leave per year to undertake voluntary work to support the communities we serve.
• We will encourage you to grow your networks across Wales, the UK and internationally.
• We have an active social committee who offer a range of activities for our people to come together outside the work setting. You can participate as much or as little as you want.

Personal and professional development

• Once you’re offered a post, we will get to know you and work with you to develop a personalised onboarding plan which considers your experience, skills, learning style and knowledge.
• We’ll help you shape your development plans with personalised career conversations and objectives, taking account of delivery goals alongside your career aspirations and helping you own your career.
• We support all our staff to learn or improve their Welsh language skills.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

We are really interested in you as an individual and what you will bring to our organisation.

Our assessment process is designed to help us get to know you better enabling us to appoint someone who will thrive in the role and who shares our organisational values.

If you are interested in working with us, please send us your application and personal statement through Civil Service Jobs.

At sift stage you must demonstrate substantial experience of:

• working directly for a regulator or statutory assurance body (e.g., inspection, oversight, audit).
• making regulatory judgements on individual cases.

In addition, the following attributes will be assessed at sift stage:

• Motivating- Inspires and energises others to perform at their best, encouraging enthusiasm, engagement, and commitment towards shared goals and objectives.
• Resilient - Maintains focus, composure, and effectiveness in the face of challenges, pressures, and adversity, bouncing back quickly from setbacks.
• Drive - Demonstrates a strong commitment to achieving results, showing determination, initiative, and a willingness to take necessary actions to meet goals

To be fair to everyone who applies, we won’t accept:

• Late applications
• Applications with missing or incomplete information
• Personal statements over 1,250 words

The deadline for application submission is Sunday 5 July.

Applications are welcome in Welsh and will not be treated less favourably than those submitted in English.

All applications will be notified of their outcomes via Civil Service Jobs at sift and interview stage.

Candidates who successfully navigate the sift stage will be required to complete an online exercise to enable us to determine their behavioural and personality preferences. Immediately on completion you will be given a report which highlights your strengths plus some development tips to help you prepare for interview. Candidates should note that the online exercise is not intended to eliminate anyone from consideration. Instead, it serves as a tool to aid in the decision-making process.

Following this, you will be required to participate in an interview and an in-tray exercise, both of which will be conducted on Friday 17 July.

In addition to the attributes/experience assessed at sift stage, the remaining attributes and experience will also be assessed at interview:

• Accountable - Takes ownership of tasks and responsibilities, ensuring that commitments are met and results are delivered with integrity and reliability.
• Experience of building and maintaining constructive working relationships with external stakeholders in a regulatory setting.

We strive for a diverse and inclusive workplace and we want to help you demonstrate your full potential whatever type of assessment is used. We are happy to discuss any person-centred adjustments required to the recruitment process. Please contact swyddi@medr.cymru.

We're looking forward to meeting everyone invited to interview at our headquarters in 2, Capital Quarter, Cardiff. We don’t usually pay travel expenses, but if this presents a real barrier to your attendance in person or if you require a reasonable adjustment, please let us know in advance by emailing swyddi@medr.cymru so we can discuss and agree arrangements prior to your interview.

Following interview we are committed to offering constructive and actionable feedback to support you on your future career journey.

Next steps

Interested…? Want to find out more?

We know how important it is for you to find out more about us so we will be holding a virtual information session for candidates on Wednesday 1 July at 11:00on Microsoft Teams. This session will not be recorded.

This will be an opportunity for you to hear more about our organisation; the role and how we invest in our people.

If you would like to attend, register by emailing swyddi@medr.cymru

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : People and Culture Team
• Email : swyddi@medr.cymru

Recruitment team

• Email : swyddi@medr.cymru

Attachments

Swydd Ddisgrifiad- Uwch Reolwr Rheoleiddio Opens in new window (pdf, 222kB)Job description - Senior Regulation Manager Opens in new window (pdf, 311kB)Canllaw i Ymgeiswyr ar Lunio Datganiad Personol Opens in new window (pdf, 112kB)A Candidate's guide to crafting a personal statement Opens in new window (pdf, 113kB)