Senior IT Auditor

**Are you an experienced IT auditor who thrives on making a difference and passionate about ensuring public services are run properly for the people of Scotland? If so, we can offer you the chance to take an exciting new step in your career with the opportunity to lead IT audit work which supports our financial and performance audits of organisations across Scotland’s public sector including the Scottish Government, NHS bodies, councils, and colleges.**

**Overall purpose of the role**

Our Innovation and Quality (I&Q) business group comprises four functions: professional support and learning; quality; digital audit; and organisational improvement. I&Q ensures that the quality of audit work across Audit Scotland is outstanding, innovative and at the forefront of the profession, and helps fulfil the vision and strategic objectives of the Auditor General for Scotland and the Accounts Commission.

Increasing our capacity in IT audit is a key element of our Audit Modernisation project. You will play a key role in delivering high quality audits across a range of public sector bodies. You will ensure that Audit Scotland has the capacity and expertise to assess areas of risk from an IT/digital perspective.

Our audited bodies are investing in new IT systems and technologies to address the challenges they face; replacing legacy systems with more cloud-based architecture. Cyber security threats continue to increase and have an impact on public sector bodies and their supply chain. The increasing risks and complexities, and increased requirements of the International Standards of Auditing, means that there is more emphasis on IT audit within our financial audits. This includes, understanding and testing General IT controls, automated and manual controls and system migrations.

You will play a key role in supervising and supporting our financial and performance auditors, including our digital audit champions, to build their understanding and expertise of IT environments and advancing technologies.

**What you will be doing**

You will conduct and manage different aspects of IT audit work that support our financial and performance audits. Your role will be both client and internal facing. You will be capable of engaging with finance and IT professionals within the organisations we audit.

You will also be responsible for drafting reports and guidance for auditors and responding to technical queries from our audit teams.

You will use your technical expertise and judgement to assess, or assist our auditors to assess:

- an organisation’s governance arrangements including cyber security and business continuity arrangements
- the effectiveness of an organisation’s IT/Digital strategies
- significant IT/digital projects/programmes within an organisation. For example, to implement a new ERP or other corporate systems.

You will also work alongside specialist colleagues in the Digital Audit team to extract, validate and analyse key financial data from the bodies we audit. You will work across the team to gain an understanding of our data analysis tools and identify opportunities for how they can be used to improve our IT audit methodology.

**Specific responsibilities may include, but are not limited to**:

- Assisting senior colleagues in designing and implementing efficient audit approaches and methodologies to be adopted by our Audit Services Group (ASG) that comply with professional standards and meet the objectives of the Auditor General and Accounts Commission
- guide and support audit teams and our digital audit champions in identifying IT related risks to their audit and assess the extent of reliance that can be placed on IT controls/functions, interfaces, reports, segregation of duties, automated calculations, new system implementations / migrations and third-party reports
- use your professional judgement to effectively summarise and communicate IT audit findings and risks and the potential impact on the organisation and/or on its financial statements and draft practical recommendations.
- establishing and developing productive professional relationships with colleagues in other business groups and with external stakeholders, including audited bodies and other audit agencies
- providing specialist advice to colleagues in response to enquiries.
- using experience and judgement to identify potential new auditing and other technological developments that are relevant to public audit and our audited bodies and draw attention to senior colleagues. Where appropriate draft tailored briefings that clearly explain the key point for audit colleagues, and consider, with senior colleagues, any impact on audit approach and existing guidance
- assisting in maintaining the online repository of technical reference material including identifying and adding latest relevant developments in a timely fashion
- designing and delivering technical training to audit colleagues as part of our professional learning programme.

**Knowle