Compliance Officer

About us

Join a Leading University at the Heart of London. King’s College London’s Finance, Procurement, Analytics Directorate (FPA) is seeking a highly motivated compliance and security conscious minded individual to join our Income Services team as a Compliance Officer. Situated within the Financial Services part of the Directorate (alongside Credit Control, Financial Accounting, Payroll & Pensions, Tax, and Treasury), the Income Services team oversees a broad and critical portfolio centred on the management and governance of the income it is responsible for, that touches upon all areas of the University. This includes the processing of bank statement income across multiple currencies, providing support for a wide range of payment acceptance channels and the management of the multi‑functional King’s eStore. Income Services also leads on PCI DSS compliance from a Finance perspective, ensuring stringent payment security standards, robust internal controls, and adherence to statutory obligations. In addition, the team plays a key and proactive role in counter‑fraud activity through proactive monitoring, risk assessment, and close collaboration with internal and external partners. Reporting to the Senior Compliance Officer (also within Income Services), this is an exciting opportunity to become part of a friendly, collaborative and service focused team within one of the world’s most prestigious universities. The successful candidate will play a key role in supporting PCI DSS compliance and cultivating a fraud awareness and prevention culture within the University.

About the role

The Compliance Officer role supports and strengthens financial and regulatory compliance with responsibilities spanning both PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) and counter fraud activity. The post holder supports the Senior Compliance Officer in the continual maintenance of PCI DSS compliance throughout the year including the annual assessment period, reviewing and improving processes, maintaining accurate documentation, monitoring departmental adherence, and helping to translate requirements into clear, practical guidance for colleagues. This year‑round activity ensures that King’s remains compliant, well prepared, and able to embed best practice into everyday operations.

Equally, the role is central to promoting and sustaining a strong organisational culture of fraud awareness and prevention. The post holder contributes to counter fraud operations by triaging fraud related enquiries, maintaining logs and supporting work on the fraud risk register. This includes maintaining and enhancing fraud awareness sites and materials to allow for the King’s community to understand and meet their responsibilities. Through proactive engagement with staff across the university, the role helps build understanding, encourages early reporting, and supports effective fraud‑risk management.

More broadly, the Compliance Officer enhances King’s financial governance by maintaining audit ready records and compliance resources, supporting the administration of training programmes, and contributing to the ongoing development of controls, procedures and guidance. Working closely with colleagues across multiple cross functional business areas, particularly Business Assurance and IT Cyber Security, the post holder applies strong communication and presentation skills, analytical thinking and discretion to uphold robust compliance standards and protect the university’s financial integrity.

PCI DSS Activities

• Maintain and improve policies, procedures and process documentation (including process mapping)
• Manage SharePoint sites, Teams channels and knowledge repositories to ensure clarity and accuracy
• Support audits, reviews and investigations through document preparation and filing
• Assist in obtaining and validating supplier compliance documentation and maintaining related logs
• Complete device spot checks and maintain the PED (PIN Entry Device) inventory
• Interview staff and report any deviations from policy or procedures
• Review and log new supplier requests relevant to PCI DSS
• Monitor linked to policies and procedures managed by other business areas relating to PCI DSS
• Continually review PCI scope and obtain annual payment acceptance channel transaction data
• Review Targeted Risk Assessments to ensure up to date and fit for purpose
• Collaborate regularly with both IT Cyber Security and Philanthropy & Alumni Engagement
• Stay up to date with card payment acceptance related news and requirement changes to PCI DSS

Counter‑Fraud Activities

• Maintain and enhance both existing Counter Fraud SharePoint Hub and externally facing Counter Fraud webpages
• Research regularly to keep up to date with current and emerging fraud scams, news and trends
• Keep up to date with fraud related compliance regulatory changes that may impact the Higher Education sector and King’s
• Proactively and promptly react to any immediate fraud threats, ensuring awareness with the relevant business areas and respective communication teams, together with updates to awareness materials
• Ensure the sharing of best practice initiatives and identify and highlight gaps where improvements can be made, producing awareness materials and/or enhancing awareness sites
• Support counter fraud related training activities including the delivery and monitoring of compliance training (adding to eLearning portal, preparing materials, sense checking, tracking completion)
• Triage incoming reports and enquiries received in central Counter Fraud mailbox, responding appropriately and escalating as needed
• Maintain fraud logs and registers of enquiries and reported fraud
• Prepare fraud log statistics for annual reports submitted to ARCC (Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee)
• With support and guidance from Business Assurance, look to progress with the updating and maintaining of financial compliance initiatives, such as the Fraud Risk Register
• Potentially support low level investigations, creating clear summaries of findings
• Assist with Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) submissions to NCA (National Crime Agency)
• Support or conduct risk assessments
• Assist with and lead on the creation of a Counter‑Fraud Champions network and ensure and encourage continual engagement with
• Build and maintain effective collaborative working relationships with various stakeholders both within the King’s community, irrespective of seniority, and with external third parties

The role holder will have ample opportunity to learn and develop on the job whilst self‑development is actively encouraged alongside management suggested and role required developmental opportunities.

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Relevant Qualifications or Experience: A university degree or equivalent professional qualification and experience is required, along with a solid and proven background in a role(s) related to compliance, counter‑fraud, finance, banking, ecommerce, or other payment related fields, where ongoing compliance, controls monitoring and validation of is necessary.
2. Compliance & Security Mindset: A demonstrable security‑conscious and proactive compliance mindset, with the ability to exercise sound judgement, maintain confidentiality, and willingness to learn and apply complex compliance and counter‑fraud requirements and responsibilities.
3. Regulatory Comprehension, Research & Analytical Skills: A proven ability to comprehend, analyse and interpret complex legislation, regulatory and compliance requirements and guidance, complemented by excellent researching ability and analytical skills together with meticulous attention to detail.
4. Effective Communication & Presentation Skills: Candidates must demonstrate excellent written and oral communication, with strong grammar and professionalism across all formats. They should present confidently, explaining complex information clearly at both high and detailed levels, and adapt their style to suit different audiences. Must have experience in preparing, facilitating, and delivering awareness or information sessions and workshops, both in person and online.
5. Strong Organisational & Time Management Skills: Role holder must be able to effectively prioritise and manage a varied workload to achieve organisational goals and consistently meet deadlines, while maintaining accurate records and demonstrating strong coordination and high standards across all compliance tasks. They will also need the wherewithal to be mindful of and to navigate through potential challenges in implementing changes within a large, complex and varied organisation, whilst having the tenacity to stay the course to follow things through to successful completion.
6. Collaboration & Teamwork: The candidate will demonstrate strong collaboration skills, foster teamwork, and possess outstanding interpersonal abilities with a positive approach essential. They should be adept at networking and building effective working relationships both internally and externally. Additionally, the role holder must have a customer service first approach but with the confidence to professionally deal with delicate situations whilst helping enforce and ensure the proper financial, compliance controls & procedures are followed.
7. Process Mapping, Analysis & Continuous Improvement: The role holder must have the skills to be able to formally document business cases and processes with the use of process maps, both high level and detailed to cater for a wide range of audiences. They must also exhibit a proactive, logical and critical thinking approach to look for improvements and enhancements.
8. Digital Skills Competency: Candidate must have a highly efficient knowledge of key Microsoft programmes including Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Teams, particularly Excel, for the creating, analysing and manipulating of data and SharePoint, for the developing, creating, editing, and maintaining of SharePoint pages used for knowledge sharing.

Desirable criteria

1. PCI DSS Compliance Knowledge: Understanding of the key principles of PCI DSS compliance, including the purpose of the standard and its role in protecting payment card data and reducing organisational risk.
2. Financial Compliance Knowledge: Understanding of financial controls and risk awareness within financial operations, together with knowledge of anti‑fraud related regulations (e.g Money Laundering) and legislation such as the Proceeds of Crime Act, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA) 2023 and the Failure to Prevent Fraud offence.
3. Data Protection Awareness: Knowledge of GDPR and Data Protection legislation and principles, particularly in handling of financial and personal data securely.
4. Higher Education Experience: Experience in a Higher Education setting, particularly familiarity with the sector’s organisational structures, compliance expectations and stakeholder engagement requirements.

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further Information

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

Please note that to take into account the Easter holiday period, interviews are due to be held on either Tuesday 28th or Wednesday 29th April.

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