Audit Compliance Manager

We're Hiring: Audit Compliance Manager

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior

Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a globally focused organization committed to strengthening governance, internal controls, regulatory compliance, risk management, and operational accountability across diverse markets.

Our teams collaborate across Audit, Compliance, Risk, Finance, Legal, Operations, Technology, Procurement, Human Resources, and business leadership to identify risks, evaluate controls, address compliance gaps, and support continuous improvement.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Audit Compliance Manager to lead audit and compliance programs, internal-control assessments, regulatory monitoring, risk-based reviews, corrective actions, and compliance improvement initiatives.

The ideal candidate will combine strong audit expertise with practical compliance knowledge to assess organizational processes, identify control weaknesses, coordinate audits, manage findings, monitor corrective actions, and provide leadership with clear insight into compliance risks and improvement opportunities.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement audit and compliance strategies aligned with organizational objectives and risk priorities.
• Establish risk-based audit and compliance frameworks, methodologies, procedures, and annual plans.
• Develop annual and periodic audit plans based on organizational risk assessments, regulatory requirements, business priorities, and historical findings.
• Conduct internal compliance reviews and control assessments across business functions and operating locations.
• Evaluate the design and operating effectiveness of internal controls, policies, procedures, and governance processes.
• Identify control gaps, compliance weaknesses, process deficiencies, and emerging risks.
• Develop audit scopes, objectives, testing procedures, work programs, sampling approaches, and documentation requirements.
• Lead audits covering financial, operational, regulatory, process, information, vendor, and business controls as applicable.
• Coordinate external audits, regulatory inspections, certification assessments, customer audits, and third-party reviews.
• Act as a key point of contact for auditors, regulators, certification bodies, and external assurance providers.
• Prepare audit requests, evidence packages, management responses, and supporting documentation.
• Review audit findings and assess their potential financial, operational, regulatory, legal, and reputational impact.
• Establish processes for classifying findings according to severity, risk, root cause, and required corrective action.
• Develop and manage corrective and preventive action plans.
• Track remediation activities through closure and verify the effectiveness of completed actions.
• Challenge overdue or insufficient corrective actions and escalate material unresolved risks.
• Conduct follow-up audits and validation reviews to confirm sustained compliance.
• Monitor regulatory requirements, legal developments, standards, industry requirements, and organizational obligations.
• Maintain a comprehensive compliance obligations register and regulatory requirements tracker.
• Assess the impact of new or changing requirements on policies, processes, controls, and business operations.
• Coordinate with Legal and Compliance teams on interpretation and implementation of regulatory requirements.
• Develop compliance assessment programs for high-risk business processes and activities.
• Perform risk assessments covering operational, regulatory, financial, technology, third-party, and process risks.
• Maintain audit and compliance risk registers and monitor changes in risk exposure.
• Evaluate key controls and identify opportunities to strengthen preventive and detective mechanisms.
• Review policies, procedures, SOPs, and control documentation for consistency with applicable requirements.
• Support the development and implementation of compliance policies, standards, procedures, and control frameworks.
• Conduct thematic reviews and targeted compliance assessments in response to emerging risks or management concerns.
• Investigate potential control breaches, policy violations, compliance incidents, or suspected circumvention of established controls where appropriate.
• Coordinate investigations with Legal, HR, Security, Risk, and other relevant functions.
• Maintain appropriate confidentiality and evidence-handling practices for sensitive audit and compliance matters.
• Develop audit and compliance dashboards covering findings, risk ratings, corrective actions, overdue items, and remediation progress.
• Establish key performance and risk indicators for audit and compliance activities.
• Prepare regular management reports highlighting significant findings, trends, control weaknesses, regulatory developments, and recommended actions.
• Present material audit and compliance matters to senior management and relevant governance committees.
• Support management in developing action plans to address systemic or recurring control issues.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, automate, and strengthen compliance processes.
• Use data analytics and technology to improve audit coverage, testing efficiency, exception detection, and continuous monitoring.
• Evaluate opportunities for automated control testing, compliance monitoring, workflow management, and analytics.
• Maintain accurate audit files, working papers, evidence records, findings logs, action trackers, and compliance documentation.
• Ensure audit documentation is complete, traceable, consistent, and suitable for review.
• Establish appropriate records-retention and document-control requirements for audit and compliance information.
• Coordinate with Finance, Procurement, Operations, Technology, HR, Legal, and other functions during cross-functional audits.
• Assess third-party and supplier compliance risks and support vendor-control reviews.
• Review controls related to procurement, payments, contracts, access, data, inventory, assets, and other high-risk processes where applicable.
• Support business continuity, information security, privacy, and technology-control assessments where relevant.
• Conduct training and awareness sessions on internal controls, compliance requirements, audit readiness, and corrective-action responsibilities.
• Promote a culture of accountability, transparency, ethical conduct, and continuous improvement.
• Benchmark audit and compliance practices against relevant standards and industry practices.
• Manage external consultants or specialist assurance providers where required.
• Define partner deliverables, scopes, timelines, budgets, and performance expectations.
• Monitor external audit and compliance service-provider performance.
• Provide independent, objective, and evidence-based observations and recommendations to management.
• Maintain appropriate independence and professional judgment when assessing controls and compliance.
• Continuously improve audit methodologies, compliance processes, risk assessment techniques, and reporting practices.

Key Performance Indicators

• Audit plan completion rate
• Audit coverage
• Risk-based audit coverage
• Compliance assessment completion
• Audit finding closure rate
• Corrective-action closure rate
• Overdue corrective actions
• Repeat finding rate
• High-risk finding rate
• Critical finding resolution time
• Average audit cycle time
• Audit report issuance timeliness
• Corrective-action effectiveness
• Control effectiveness
• Control deficiency rate
• Regulatory compliance rate
• Regulatory obligation monitoring coverage
• Compliance breach rate
• Compliance incident resolution time
• Audit evidence completeness
• Audit documentation quality
• External audit performance
• Regulatory inspection readiness
• Regulatory finding closure
• Internal-control improvement
• Risk assessment completion
• Risk-register accuracy
• Policy compliance rate
• Third-party compliance performance
• Continuous-monitoring coverage
• Automated testing adoption
• Data-analytics utilization
• Compliance training completion
• Stakeholder response time
• Audit stakeholder satisfaction
• External consultant performance
• Audit budget adherence
• Compliance cost efficiency
• Process improvement completion
• Management action completion
• Governance reporting timeliness

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in internal audit, compliance, risk management, internal controls, governance, regulatory assurance, or audit management, preferably within an international organization, regulated industry, professional services environment, technology business, manufacturing, financial services, logistics, real estate, or other complex operating environment.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Strong understanding of internal audit principles, compliance frameworks, risk management, and internal controls.
• Experience developing and executing risk-based audit plans.
• Strong knowledge of audit planning, fieldwork, testing, evidence evaluation, reporting, and follow-up.
• Experience assessing control design and operating effectiveness.
• Strong understanding of regulatory compliance and obligations management.
• Experience managing internal, external, regulatory, customer, supplier, and certification audits.
• Strong skills in root-cause analysis, finding classification, and corrective-action management.
• Experience tracking remediation through closure and validating corrective-action effectiveness.
• Strong analytical and investigative capabilities.
• Ability to interpret complex requirements and translate them into practical controls.
• Experience developing audit reports, compliance assessments, dashboards, and executive presentations.
• Strong understanding of governance, risk, compliance, and control frameworks.
• Familiarity with GRC, audit-management, document-management, ERP, data-analytics, and workflow platforms.
• Experience using data analytics or automated testing to improve audit effectiveness is desirable.
• Strong stakeholder-management and communication skills.
• Ability to challenge processes and controls constructively while maintaining professional relationships.