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Director Ethics and Compliance (10484)

Job group: 3
Grade: G13/3 (net (basic) montly salary* for this vacancy: EUR 12 435,12, which may be supplemented by various allowances depending on your personal circumstances)
Duration of appointment: 5 years
Career path: Managerial 
Location: Munich 
Application deadline: 29.12.2019

The European Patent Office (EPO) – the second-largest international organisation in Europe, with 7 000 staff and a self-financed annual budget of EUR 2bn – is looking for a Director Ethics and Compliance.

The Ethics and Compliance directorate is responsible for:

• contributing to the promotion of integrity, ethics, and accountability throughout the Office, and preventing, detecting and addressing misconduct; it helps ensure that employees conduct themselves in a manner compliant with the applicable provisions
• investigating the facts relating to allegations or indications of misconduct objectively, impartially and in accordance with the principles of proportionality, due process, data protection and respect for all parties, and with all the applicable provisions
• conducting investigations into allegations in accordance with the legal and procedural framework of the European Patent Office, applying all necessary procedural safeguards to ensure respect of the rights of all parties concerned
• establishing, gathering and analysing all relevant evidence, inculpatory and exculpatory, with all due care and diligence
• reporting the results and making recommendations to the appointing authority
• developing and implementing the EPO's compliance and ethics programme to ensure that business practices conform to applicable laws, regulations and ethical business principles, in addition to developing and promoting a culture of integrity.

Directorate Ethics and Compliance is part of Principal Directorate Internal Audit and Oversight. It conducts investigations in full independence following the applicable legal framework. Investigations are initiated without informing the appointing authority, except where there is a serious risk to the operations or reputation of the Office.

The Directorate Ethics and Compliance operates in an ethical, professional and impartial manner in accordance with the applicable legal framework and acknowledged international standards.

Your main responsibilities
As Director Ethics and Compliance, you will be responsible in particular for

• the Investigative Unit and the investigations carried out
• ensuring that reports of investigations are objective, complete, concise and issued on time
• issuing general or specific recommendations related to rules and practices through compliance reports to enforce the application of the rules or to prevent the risk of non-compliance
• establishing policies and procedures to promote a culture that fosters ethical and compliant behaviour
• working with relevant stakeholders to provide the basis for ensuring adequate internal controls
• communicating with internal and external auditors on compliance and ethics matters
• additional tasks as assigned by the principal director

What we expect from you

• A qualification in auditing, certification by the Institute of Internal Auditors or recognised accounting and investigation qualifications
• Excellent legal/financial expertise and the ability to analyse legal and procedural issues and financial and non-financial evidence
• The ability to see the wider implications of events and risks, and to identify and tackle potentially sensitive and critical issues
• Several years of experience in the field of auditing, investigations and/or corporate compliance
• The highest level of integrity
• Excellent communication skills, both orally and in writing
• Sound knowledge of the internal workings of the EPO or similar large organisations, obtained in a culturally diverse environment such as an international organisation

Your qualifications

• Diploma of completed studies at master's level or – in exceptional cases – equivalent professional experience
• Excellent knowledge of one official language and ability to understand the other two; in exceptional cases, excellent knowledge of one official language and ability to understand another
• Citizenship of one of the member states of the European Patent Organisation

Process and timeline
The successful candidate will be selected on the basis of qualifications and relevant experience, supplemented as appropriate by interviews, tests and/or a personality questionnaire.
It is intended to hold the interviews in week 5/6, in Munich.

* after deduction of EPO internal tax and before deduction of staff contributions to the social-security and pension schemes.

To foster gender diversity, EPO encourages applications from women. 

The EPO is an equal opportunities employer and supports workforce diversity as a signatory to the Diversity Charter (Charta der Vielfalt) since 2010.
All applications for vacant positions will be welcomed and considered on the professional merits of the applicant against the role profile for the position regardless of nationality, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, parental responsibilities, age, religion or belief.

About the EPO

The European Patent Office
With almost 7 000 employees, the European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the largest public service institutions in Europe. Its headquarters are in Munich and it also has offices in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague and Vienna. The EPO was founded with the aim of strengthening co-operation on patents in Europe. Through the EPO's centralised patent granting procedure, inventors are able to obtain high-quality patent protection in up to 44 countries, covering a market of some 700 million people. The EPO is also the world's leading authority in patent information and patent searching.

In 2018, the EPO received over 174 000 patent applications and granted over 127 000 patents. Its free online patent database, Espacenet, contains more than 100 million technical documents from 100 countries, and its free neural machine translation service, Patent Translate, provides instant, high-quality translation in 32 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.

What we offer

• intellectual challenges and empowerment through professional development
• the chance to work with inspiring people from various different cultures
• an excellent social package
• contributory medical-insurance and pension schemes
• relocation benefits and various allowances (e.g. household, dependants', childcare, education, expatriation, installation and rent allowance), depending on their personal circumstances

Interested
You can apply via the ''Apply'' button.

this job offer is not open for applications