About UsThe new PwC Competency Centre is one of our key priorities in delivering a best in class proposition as one of the world’s leading professional services firms. Not only will it offer our people the opportunity to work more flexibly and with little travel required, you will be working with a breadth of nationally based clients from small SMEs to large corporations.

With ever changing technology and digital advancements impacting businesses, PwC has to adapt in order to meet our clients’ needs. Our clients are changing how they work – increasingly working remotely and across multiple locations. The Competency Centre will play an integral part in how we rise to the challenge - allowing us to improve quality, deliver outstanding value to our clients and create a better experience for our people.

A key focus for this new proposition is supporting the PwC Social mobility agenda, and as such we are looking for people who want to make a real difference by being open minded about who we recruit and deploy on audit work. You will be making a big impact in providing professional development to a diverse range of people.

What we do:
Our Competency Centre data function will be responsible for the delivery of a wide range of onshore data audit support activities. This will include, but not be limited to:

Complex, time-pressured requests that cannot be sent to our offshore Service Delivery Centre (SDC) teams

Supporting SDC teams with complex requests that can be sent offshore

Bespoke General Ledger transaction flow analytics using internally developed toolkits

Data reconciliations

Reperformance and review of complex models and calculations

Audit insights

Detailed subledger testing

Presenting findings & deliverables in the form of written reports, presentations and Dashboards

We will work across clients, engagement teams and SDCs to ensure high quality delivery of a range of analytics on our external audits. This will expand to include work where similar capabilities are required as part of certain Risk Assurance propositions (e.g. Internal Audit). Over time the team will be part of an evolution in our scope of activities, working closely with our new Digital Audit practice and its Advanced Analytics team, as we standardise, offshore and automate existing activities, all while exploring new activities to embrace a fully data-enabled audit approach.

The Role:As the team was established in August 2019, the Activity Leader role will be central to the operational maturity and growth of the team, challenging the status quo and demonstrating strong leadership, coaching and mentoring, with accountability for the overall quality of the work delivered by the data team, as well as supporting the development of the team and its capabilities. The selected individual will be highly motivated to help drive this strategically significant change in our business.

As an Activity Lead / Manager within the Competency Centre data team you will be:

Leading delivery of data work in the Competency Centre from a people, client service, quality and efficiency perspective;

Managing a large team of people, including development, coaching, mentoring, and pastoral care;

Taking an active role in the management of supply and demand, working closely with resourcing teams, wider Digital Audit Advanced Analytics (DA3) and the business to ensure that requests for work are handled appropriately, utilising available MI to make informed decisions about scheduling and prioritisation of work;

Overseeing, monitoring and evaluating the quality of work performed by your Supervisor and Performer teams - including:

Coaching and supporting your supervisors to drive continuous improvement within their Performer teams
Driving understanding of and compliance with any technical and other operational requirements
Thematic reviews of internal quality reviews, root cause identification and action plan development
Responding to quality review findings and technical updates;

Acting as an internal technical expert for the activity, including resolving Competency Centre team member consultations and escalations, being involved in complex/judgemental data work, and handling challenging or sensitive queries and escalations from the front-line delivery team;

Implement and maintain ongoing Competency Centre Learning and Development activities, including formal activity training curriculum, ad hoc learning and sharing, and a formal and effective coaching and mentoring structure;

Contributing to Assurance-wide training and publicity to help front-line teams develop an understanding of the capabilities of the data function within the Competency Centre;

Working closely with Competency Centre leadership on the operational management of the team;

Working with the wider Distributed Delivery Model implementation team to support the transition of data activities into the Competency Centre, including such elements as:

Operating processes, working practices and supporting collateral
Recruitment and resourcing
People strategy, including career model, moderation processes, people experiences, etc.
Supply and demand strategy
Marketing new initiative to the business ;

Predominantly office-based, and while some travel may be required, you will be expected to conduct the majority of client and engagement team interactions virtually;

Engage actively with our Global Data Acquisition strategy to help clients extract the right data from their systems;

Build and maintain strong working relationships with both clients and front-line delivery teams, to enable high quality delivery; and

Drive continuing thought leadership and innovation in what and how we deliver the audit using data capabilities, including identifying opportunities for greater standardisation, automation, offshoring/outsourcing and broader process enhancements.

Essential Skills/Experience:Demonstrable technical ability and experience in working with industry-leading tools/software, for example:

SQL
Alteryx
SAS or ACL
Visualisation tools such as Power BI, Qlikview or Tableau

Excellent people skills, including motivating and coaching more junior team members

Strong leadership skills

Strong written and oral communication skills, at all levels

The ability to think creatively and innovate with new solutions

Excellent organisational / project management skills

Proactive and self-motivated

Strong “customer service” mindset

Desirable skills/Experience:

Experience of working with broad range of teams in diverse geographic locations

Experience with coding/scripting languages such as R, Python, VBA, C++/C#, Google Apps Scripts/Javascript/Java

Completion of, or working towards the completion of, relevant accounting qualification (those working towards a qualification will be supported through to completion)

Understanding of audit and/or financial accounting process
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With minimal travel for this role and the offer of flexible working options, alongside a competitive salary there’s never been a better reason to discover a job you love.

Diversity in how we recruit is incredibly important to us - this role will be considered on a part-time basis along with flexibility on working hours.