Regulation Functional Team Leader

About OPSS

Do you care about the safety of products and want to protect people and places? Can we use your skills, knowledge and experience to enable UK business to thrive? If the answer is yes, then we would like to hear from you!

We are the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), part of the Department for Business & Trade. We are here for the purpose of making regulation work to deliver real world impact. Regulation is a powerful Government tool to address market failures, influence behaviour and promote positive action. Crafted and delivered well, regulation can be an enabler of growth, innovation and efficiency.

Since early 2018 we have been building a positive and creative team that enjoys a position of influence and respect within an organisation that continues to grow.

Our primary purpose is to protect people and places from product-related harm, ensuring consumers and businesses can buy and sell products with confidence

Further information can be found on our website here .

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles. We embrace diversity and promote equality of opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and skills. There is a guaranteed interview scheme (DCS) for people with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

We are Inclusive

We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible and recognise how important inclusivity is to achieve the best outcomes. We hope to attract applications from all underrepresented groups.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation if required to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

The Role and Our Team

We are recruiting for a Grade 6 Functional Team Leader within the Regulatory Impact Area at OPSS.

The Regulatory Impact Area delivers work with real-world impact, protecting people and places from product-related harm. We regulate products across a wide range of sectors in the UK economy. As the national product regulator, we enforce a broad framework of product regulation, deliver evidence-based interventions, and support businesses to meet their legal obligations. We do this proportionately through a combination of enforcement, engagement, and collaboration across government, and with local, national and international regulatory partners. As a risk-based regulator, we share our expertise to lead and influence both domestically and globally.

You will provide senior leadership of OPSS regulatory activity as part of the UKs product regulation system. You will lead multidisciplinary teams to design and deliver risk-based, proportionate regulatory interventions that protect people and places while supporting businesses to innovate and grow.

We are looking for confident and credible leaders with significant experience of regulation, compliance and enforcement, including leading complex and high-profile investigations and incidents through to clear outcomes.

Operating in a complex and evolving regulatory environment, you will combine strong people leadership with robust operational delivery and sound judgement. You will navigate ambiguity and scrutiny with resilience, working collaboratively across OPSS, DBT and delivery partners to deliver meaningful, real-world impact.

The Regulation Impact Area includes several high-impact enforcement teams; we are currently recruiting for a vacancy within Online and Supply Chain Enforcement.

Products and Sectors Regulation

Products and Sectors Regulation is responsible for regulating sectors with obligations relating to product safety, security, environmental impact, accuracy and energy efficiency. Our work spans most industry sectors and supports wider government priorities. We work closely with, and on behalf of, other departments to deliver shared outcomes.

This includes supporting economic growth by providing a robust and fair regulatory environment in which businesses have confidence to invest and grow, while ensuring that consumers, places and the environment are protected from product-related harm. Our work also extends to new and emerging sectors, enabling innovation while maintaining appropriate protections.

Online and Supply Chain Enforcement

This team is responsible for regulating the supply chain used to distribute products, ensuring consumers across the UK can feel as confident shopping online as they do on the UKs High Streets; we are committed to preventing unsafe and non-compliant products entering the UK supply chain.

This team delivers an innovative programme of regulatory interventions, finding the right mechanisms to stop bad actors within the supply chain, including at ports and fulfilment centres. The work is risk-based, proactively monitoring online marketplaces and other platforms who make products available to UK consumers.

Construction Products

This team is responsible for regulating the construction products sector on behalf of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), to help the UK build better, safer buildings, ensuring that construction products meet their performance requirements and are safe. Where construction products do not meet these requirements, we take the necessary enforcement action.

Colleagues within the Regulatory Impact Area may be allocated to work areas, having regard to their preferences, skills and experience, and business requirements. A reserve list from this campaign may be retained and used to make future appointments.

Key Responsibilities:

• Setting strategic direction and ensuring regulatory delivery is coherent, prioritised and joined‑up across teams and partners. Take a system approach and adapt at pace to emerging risks, intelligence and ministerial or organisational change.
• Lead regulatory relationships with regulated businesses to influence their approach to compliance and engage with key stakeholders relevant to the sector to secure sector wide improvements that benefit people and places.
• Lead the design and delivery of risk-based, proportionate regulatory interventions (proactive and reactive), using an evidence‑based, problem‑solving approach focused on measurable outcomes for people and places and compliant businesses.
• Provide senior leadership for complex cases and incidents, ensuring effective triage, timely escalation and high‑quality decision‑making, with clear, defensible advice under uncertainty and external scrutiny.
• Maintain strong operational grip across a mixed portfolio (caseloads, projects and interventions): prioritise effectively, allocate resources and drive pace and quality. Ensure delivery meets relevant statutory duties and regulatory frameworks (including the Regulators Code, Regulatory Delivery Model, Business Impact Target and Growth Duty), supported by robust governance, assurance and performance information.
• Work in partnership with internal and external specialists (including Legal, Intelligence, Engineering and Science, Data and Analysis and other delivery partners) to shape options, manage risk and progress interventions at pace.

We are keen to hear from people from varying backgrounds, who can demonstrate their capability against the following essential criteria:

The below criteria are essential and will be assessed at application stage;

• Significant experience of regulation, compliance and enforcement, including leading complex and high-profile investigations and incidents through to clear outcomes.
• Proven experience of setting strategic direction and priorities, coordinating delivery across multiple teams with different professional disciplines and partners achieving coherent, joined‑up regulatory outcomes.
• Demonstrable ability to design and deliver end‑to‑end regulatory interventions, using a problem-solving approach, selecting and applying an appropriate suite of tools (compliance, enforcement and market level interventions) to achieve measurable, real‑world impact.
• Strong understanding of proportionate, risk-based regulation, including evidence gathering, analysis and evaluation ...