Head of Internal Audit and Assurance

Job title: Head of Internal Audit and Assurance

About the Role African Parks is elevating the lead internal audit role to build a risk-driven assurance function and serve as the operational lead and Super User for a new GRC platform across a portfolio of parks in multiple countries. The role combines hands-on assurance delivery with technology-enabled governance to enhance real-time collaboration, data-driven insights, and governance maturity.

What You'll Do

• Lead the planning, execution, and continuous improvement of Internal Operational Audits (IOA) with a target of 10–12 park audits per year, including incubation program audits, with on-site participation.
• Own end-to-end audit lifecycle: risk-based planning, scoping, fieldwork, evidence capture, reporting, and quality review; ensure consistency and fairness across engagements.
• Conduct pre-audit briefings and structured post-audit debriefings; deliver finance-specific briefings for financial audits; apply escalation rules and ensure re-audits of high-risk findings where thresholds are not met.
• Mature the assurance function from compliance checks to integrated risk-based assurance, designing tools, templates, scoring criteria, and reporting; maintain a consolidated, multi-year view of findings and systemic risk.
• Drive the GRC platform implementation as the designated Super User: configure, pilot, roll-out, migrate historical data (2024–2026), integrate with AP systems, and train park auditors and staff across languages and locations.
• Collaborate with Technology and external vendors on system configuration, access control, and data quality; establish platform governance and ongoing usage monitoring.
• Provide analytics, reporting, and governance inputs by integrating IOA and LE data into Power BI; prepare consolidated inputs for the FRA Committee and AP Board.
• Manage feedback loops, CAPA follow-ups, GRM and HR compliance audits; coordinate park satisfaction surveys for continuous improvement.

What We're Looking For

• Senior internal audit professional with professional audit credentials and a track record of building or maturing assurance functions.
• Experience delivering internal operational audits, risk-based methodologies, and working credibly with park leadership, Heads of Department, the Board, and donor stakeholders.
• Strong technology fluency with GRC platforms, data migration, and multilingual workflows; experience with Power BI and integrated governance analytics.
• Excellent stakeholder management, training capability (Trainer of Trainers) and ability to operate across widely dispersed teams.
• Ability to operate with judgment in culturally diverse contexts and in a conservation NGO environment.

Nice to Have

• Experience in conservation NGOs or similarly complex, geographically dispersed operations.
• Prior exposure to Sage/Serenic, Salesforce, EarthRanger, and BI tooling integrations.
• Experience designing and delivering multilingual training and user adoption programs.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary and benefits not disclosed in the posting.