Compliance Manager

Description:

Compliance Manager, Electronics (Life Safety Products)
Ormskirk, West Lancashire

Up to £70,000

Office based with test house travel

Every electronic product you trust, from the phone in your pocket to the alarm on your ceiling, got there through compliance. Someone determined which standards applied, built the technical file, managed the test house, and put their name to the declaration. This role puts you in charge of that whole discipline for a market-leading UK manufacturer whose products protect life every single day.

KO2's client is a long-established, highly profitable British electronics manufacturer, a genuine market leader that designs and builds its products in the UK and exports worldwide. Their systems are electronic sensing and detection devices communicating, increasingly wirelessly, with control equipment that triggers alarm and notification devices. Life safety electronics, engineered and certified to some of the most demanding harmonised standards in the industry.

The opportunity

This is a succession appointment. The company's current compliance specialist retires next spring, and the business wants their successor in post by the autumn so a proper handover happens with the person who holds the knowledge today. You will take ownership of the compliance function: determining applicable standards and directives for new and existing products, creating and maintaining Technical Construction Files and Declarations of Conformity, managing relationships with third party test and approval houses in the UK and Europe, overseeing the workflow of a well-equipped in-house EMC facility, and leading a small verification team.

What you will need

Here is the honest picture. The full standards landscape for these products is wide: EN 54 and its many parts, BS 5839, BS 8629, BS 7273, EN (phone number removed), EN 50130, EN 50131, EN 61000, EN (phone number removed), the Construction Products Regulation, plus the directive set that applies to any electronic product: RED, LVD, EMC, RoHS, Environmental Product Declarations and the incoming Cyber Resilience Act. Nobody arrives knowing all of that, and the client does not expect you to. What they need is:

Solid product compliance experience with electronic products, meaning you know your way around RED, LVD, EMC and RoHS and how a product gets legally to market. This is the must-have.
Genuine experience working with third party test and approval houses: scoping test programmes, managing submissions, negotiating findings, maintaining certification. This matters enormously here because the core product standards are harmonised and compliance is proven at the test house.
Enough EMC understanding to manage an in-house test workflow, without needing to be the person on the bench.
Working knowledge of some of the standards above. EN 54 or wider fire and security standards experience is a significant plus and will move you to the front of the queue, but a strong compliance professional from another electronics sector who can absorb new standards will be seriously considered.
The organisation and people skills to run a verification team and report compliance status to senior management.Why this role

Compliance carries real weight in this business: nothing ships without it. You inherit an experienced team, an in-house EMC facility, and a structured handover from a respected long-serving specialist rather than an empty desk. The company is stable, privately owned, profitable, and its products sit in a regulated, non-discretionary market that does not slow down when the economy does. At £70,000 in West Lancashire, with a genuine leadership platform and a clean succession story, this is one of the strongest compliance appointments in the North West this year.

To apply or for a confidential conversation, contact KO2 Embedded Recruitment Solutions