Norven
Founding Partner — AI Assurance & Governance
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FOUNDING PARTNER — AI ASSURANCE & GOVERNANCE
(Pre-Launch Founding Team)
THE ROLE IN ONE LINE
A Partner-level leader — sitting or former Big Four Partner, senior regulator, or equivalent — to build Norven's AI assurance practice from first principles. You author one assurance methodology for every domain the practice will ever serve — financial services is the wedge, not the boundary — and you build the team, the standard and the market alongside the founder. A founding seat, not a lateral move, and not a portfolio role.
THE MISSION
Make accountable human judgement the standard for consequential AI decisions. Every profession that society relies on — audit, medicine, engineering, law — eventually built an institution where a named expert stands behind the judgement. AI decision-making has no such institution yet. Norven is being built to be it: not another governance tool, not another consultancy — the place where the question "who stands behind this decision?" finally has an answer. The person we hire into this seat is not joining that institution. They are building it.
WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS
AI now makes consequential decisions inside banks, insurers, public bodies and AI vendors faster than those institutions can evidence, govern and defend them. When a regulator, board or court asks who independently reviewed a decision — and whether a named expert will stand behind that judgement — there is no good answer today.
Norven is being built to be that answer: independent, evidence-backed review of specific consequential AI deployment decisions, carried out with the rigour of a skilled-person review and designed so that named experts stand behind their judgement within clearly defined boundaries. There is a structural reason this cannot be built inside a large firm: organisations that build, implement and sell AI systems cannot independently assure that same market. If you lead AI trust, risk or assurance inside one of those firms, you already know this ceiling better than we do. This seat exists on the other side of it.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
- OWN THE METHODOLOGY — ACROSS EVERY DOMAIN. We start in financial services because that is where regulatory demand is sharpest today, but the methodology you author is one methodology for the whole regulated economy. The same evidence standard must hold whether the system under review is a bank's credit model, a hospital's clinical AI, a government decision system, or an autonomous physical system — each domain opened deliberately, on your standard. Every domain specialist we hire inherits your methodology, never the other way round. Financial services is the wedge. The mandate is the map.
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MAKE THE MARKET — WITH THE FOUNDER. This is the founder's key commercial partner, and the seat demands commercial fluency, not just technical authority. Independent AI assurance has no established buyer behaviour yet, so the two of you build it together: pricing strategy and engagement models, packaging, deal shaping, and the commercial judgement on every early engagement. You must be able to sit across the table from a CRO and price the work as instinctively as you can scope it. An established market standing at CRO, General Counsel and board level is a genuine bonus — and here it converts to equity — but the non-negotiable is commercial awareness in the bones of the role.
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BUILD THE PRACTICE. You own the assurance business end to end — the quality bar, the delivery model, the specialist bench beneath you. Financial services first; then healthcare, robotics and physical AI, government and public sector, sovereign AI programmes and frontier AI — each opened on the methodology you set. Civilian use only, always.
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SET THE STANDARD. The market's reference point for independent AI assurance does not exist yet. You build the practice that intends to write it — and as Norven convenes a fellowship of senior practitioners, former regulators and standards figures, you sit at the centre of that bench as its practice leader.
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CARRY THE ROOM. CROs, Heads of Model Risk, General Counsel, board risk committees, supervisors. You have done this for years. Now you do it for something you own.
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LEARN THE NEW TERRAIN. Agentic systems, LLM pipelines, model evaluation — parts of this are new to everyone, including us. We want a leader secure enough to be a student again, hands-on, not delegating the learning downward.
WHO THIS IS FOR
- Partner at a Big Four firm (sitting or exited), Director/Partner-grade at a regulator, or equivalent standing at a systemically important institution — in AI trust, technology risk, IT audit, model risk, operational resilience or regulatory assurance.
- You have EITHER personally led or signed independent regulatory reviews (s166/s195 or equivalent) relied upon by boards and supervisors, OR built and led a substantial AI trust, AI governance or technology-risk assurance business with named accountability for its quality and its clients.
- You have authored — or owned the P&L and quality bar of — assurance or risk methodology that institutions adopted.
- Regulated financial services depth as your domain of authority — with the architectural range to author a standard that holds across healthcare, public sector, sovereign programmes and physical AI. FS-only thinkers will find this seat frustrating; systems thinkers will find it the mandate of a career.
- Commercial fluency as a requirement: you have carried revenue accountability, priced and shaped engagements, and can act as the founder's partner on pricing strategy and commercial design from day one. An established book and a market that knows your name is a strong bonus — not a prerequisite.
- A builder's temperament: energised, not unsettled, by there being no brand behind you yet, and no standard until you set it. Here, your standing is the pipeline — and it converts to equity, not a distribution.
- A learner's posture: honest about what you don't yet know about AI-native systems, and hungry to close that gap personally.
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WHO THIS IS NOT FOR
- Anyone seeking a portfolio NED path, an advisory retainer, or a soft landing after Partner. This is an execution seat.
- AI governance generalists without a signed or P&L-accountable assurance record behind them.
- Anyone who needs the machine — the brand, the leverage model, the indemnity umbrella — to operate. Here, you are the machine until you build it.
TERMS
Founding-team economics: meaningful equity, compensation structured honestly for the build phase, full transparency at first conversation. The destination is full-time — but we are open to starting fractional: build alongside your current commitments through the pre-launch phase, converting to full-time as funding lands or the first engagements are secured. London-based; launching UK and EU first, building outward from there by design.
HOW TO START THE CONVERSATION
This is a conversation, not an application. Apply through this listing with a short note on the assurance business you have built or the independent work you have signed, and why now is your moment to build — or message Mohammed Mirza, Founder, directly on LinkedIn.
AI assurance · AI governance · AI trust · Skilled Person · s166 · model risk · technology risk · regulatory assurance · operational resilience · board risk committee · Big Four · Partner · agentic systems · LLM · model evaluation · frontier AI · practice growth · P&L · revenue accountability · client relationships · business development
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