Associate Director, Operational Risk

At OakNorth, we’re on a mission to empower the UK’s most ambitious businesses.

Since 2015, we’ve lent over $18 billion across the UK and US, helped create more than 58,000 new homes and 36,000 new jobs, and supported hundreds of thousands of personal savers — all while fuelling the UK economy.

The mission of the Associate Director, Operational Risk To proactively safeguard OakNorth’s operational integrity and resilience by partnering with the business to identify, assess, and mitigate operational risks, ensuring robust governance, effective controls, and compliance with regulatory standards.

Key Responsibilities:

Advisory partnership: Act as a trusted advisor to first line business teams, providing expert guidance on the identification, assessment, and management of operational risks, and supporting the enhancement of control monitoring within business assurance activities.

Stakeholder engagement: Build strong relationships with senior management, risk owners andcontrol owners and their teams to promote a proactive and transparent risk culture across the organisation.

Risk and Control Self-Assessment (RCSA): Support the planning, execution, and review of RCSAs, ensuring risks are appropriately identified, assessed, and mitigatedwith outputs that are consistent with the bank’s risk framework and regulatory expectations.

Embed risk technology platforms: Support the implementation and integration of the Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) tool AuditBoard and the incident management tool Incident.io into operational risk management processes.

Operational incident management: Oversee the management and analysis of operational events and issues, ensuring timely investigation, root cause analysis, and implementation of remedial actions.

Governance and reporting: Prepare and review risk reporting and insights for governance committees, providing clear, concise analysis to inform decision-making and maintain regulatory alignment.

Payments risk oversight: Advise on risks and controls related to payments processes and systems, ensuring robust governance, incident management, and regulatory compliance with payment scheme.

Third-party risk management: Provide oversight and advice on the identification, assessment, and monitoring of risks associated with third-party and outsourced service providersensuring compliance with PRA and FCA outsourcing and operational resilience requirements.

Operational resilience: Contribute to the ongoing development and execution of the bank’s Operational Resilience programme, providing continuous assurance and ensuring alignment with regulatory expectations and internal frameworks.

Change Management:Provide independent risk advice and challenge to the Change Impact Review Panel and Change Management Working Group, ensuring operational and regulatory risks are properly considered in decision-making.

Support to Director, Operational Risk:Provide high-quality advice, analysis, and project support on key operational risk initiatives and regulatory deliverables as required.

Experience & Skills:

Operational risk management: Proven experience in operational risk or governance roles within financial services (including People, Payments, Third Party, Operational Resilience and Change Management), ideally in a regulated banking environment.

GRC and technology expertise: Strong understanding of Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) tools and incident management systems (e.g. AuditBoard, Incident.io or equivalent), with hands-on experience implementing or optimising such platforms.

Regulatory knowledge: Strong understanding of UK regulatory requirements and expectations relating to operational risk, including PRA and FCA frameworks, third party risk, operational resilience, and governance standards.

Data and analytics: Strong analytical capability (including use of AI tools), with experience developing dashboards and management information that provide actionable insights for senior stakeholders and governance forums.

Stakeholder management: Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to influence, collaborate, and gain buy-in from diverse stakeholders across business lines and control functions.

Continuous improvement mindset: Proactive and solutions-oriented, with the ability to identify opportunities to strengthen processes and adopt new tools or automation to enhance operational efficiency.

Professionalism and adaptability: Self-starter who can work independently within a small team, managing competing priorities and maintaining high standards of delivery in a part-time capacity.

Benefits & Perks:

Equity. We want people to have a stake in the business so that all our interests are aligned.

25 days holiday

Personalized benefits – opt-in to what matters to you

Subsidised Private Medical Insurance with Bupa

Enhanced maternity and paternity leave

Wellbeing and social events

Support causes that matter to you – Volunteering time off

Salary sacrifice schemes (Cycle to work, nursery, gym, electric car scheme)

Permanent - Full Time