The risk landscape in 2026 is not getting simpler. Regulatory frameworks are multiplying, technology is evolving faster than governance can keep up, and the skills required to run an effective internal audit function have quietly shifted into genuinely specialist territory.
For organisations that rely on strong audit and risk oversight, that shift has a very practical consequence: the people they need are harder to find than they used to be.
Here is what we are seeing in the market right now.
The volume of regulatory change landing on UK organisations over the past two years has been significant. New frameworks, expanded disclosure requirements, and cross-border governance obligations have pushed compliance from a support function into something much closer to a strategic priority.
The knock-on effect for hiring is straightforward. Demand for professionals who genuinely understand regulatory change, who have navigated multi-jurisdictional environments and can translate shifting requirements into audit-ready processes, has risen sharply. Supply has not moved at the same rate.
What this means for hiring managers is that waiting for the perfect candidate is a risky strategy. Professionals with meaningful compliance and governance experience are fielding multiple conversations, and the organisations that move decisively tend to win them. A willingness to consider candidates who bring strong regulatory grounding from adjacent sectors is increasingly the difference between filling a role and leaving it open for six months.
For professionals in this space, the market is firmly in your favour. If your experience spans regulatory change management, governance frameworks, or assurance across complex organisations, that background is portable and in demand well beyond the sector you are currently in.
Internal audit used to have a reasonably well-defined profile. Strong technical grounding, process knowledge, a good eye for control weaknesses. That profile still matters, but it is no longer sufficient on its own.
Organisations are now asking their audit functions to assess operational resilience in meaningful ways, to understand IT dependencies, to evaluate whether business continuity arrangements would actually hold under pressure. They are also grappling with workforce risk in ways that simply did not feature on audit plans a few years ago. Hybrid working, skills shortages, AI-driven role changes and the cultural dynamics that come with them are all live concerns that audit teams are expected to have a view on.
The gap we keep encountering is between what organisations need from their audit professionals and what the traditional talent pipeline has historically produced. Candidates who combine technical audit rigour with genuine cross-functional breadth are rare, and competition for them is fierce.
For candidates, the practical implication is worth sitting with. The most compelling profiles we present are those that demonstrate breadth alongside depth. If your experience is narrow, even if it is deep, it is worth thinking about how to build out the cross-functional dimension, whether through the roles you pursue next or the projects you take on in your current one.
Ask most audit leaders where their biggest resource gap is and the answer is almost always some version of the same thing: technology.
AI governance, cloud risk, cybersecurity assurance, digital transformation oversight. These are no longer peripheral concerns that can be passed to an IT department. They sit squarely within the audit mandate, and they require people who can actually do them credibly.
The challenge is that this kind of talent sits at an intersection that does not produce large numbers. Professionals who combine genuine audit and assurance capability with deep technology literacy are in short supply across every sector we work in. Organisations that have recognised this early are building their teams proactively rather than reactively, bringing in lateral hires with backgrounds in IT risk, cyber, or technology programme assurance to complement existing audit capability.
For professionals with experience in areas like AI governance, cloud security, or regulatory frameworks such as DORA and NIS2, the honest message is that your skills are genuinely scarce and the market reflects that. Sector boundaries matter less than they once did when the underlying expertise is this sought after.
Internal audit is being asked to cover more ground, with more accountability, than at any point in recent memory. The organisations that will navigate that well are the ones investing in the right people now rather than when the pressure is already on.
If you are building an audit or risk team and finding the search harder than expected, or if you are a finance or risk professional thinking about your next move, we would be glad to have a straightforward conversation about what the market looks like.
