About us

Part of the Global Product Regulations and Compliance leadership team, this role leads Dyson's external affairs - regulatory intelligence and portfolio resilience capability. Based in Singapore, the role is responsible for ensuring that relevant emerging legislation, regulations, compliance standards and external standards activity are identified, assessed and translated into clear business implications before they affect market access, product strategy or portfolio delivery.

The Head of External Affairs connects external intelligence from regulators, standards bodies, manufacturer and trade associations, regulatory notification services, market teams and specialist networks with internal decision-making.

The role leads and delivers the Portfolio Resilience governance model, bringing together Business Unit, Category teams and cross-business functions to assess strategy, impacts, agree priorities, assign accountable owners and track mitigating actions. The role also directs Dyson's priorities and positions in relevant external forums, ensuring that technical expertise and portfolio need informs external engagement.

About the role

Responsibilities (What)

• Lead the global regulatory resilience framework for relevant legislation, product regulations, compliance standards and performance standards that may affect Dyson products, services, business processes or market access.
• Ensure effective horizon scanning across government and regulator activity, standards development, regulatory consultations, manufacturer and trade associations, external working groups, market intelligence and specialist information services.
• Establish and share Dyson position as appropriate.
• Establish proportionate methods to assess maturity, timing, confidence, applicability and potential impact of external change, clearly distinguishing confirmed requirements from proposals, emerging signals and areas of uncertainty.
• Translate external developments into concise, evidence-based intelligence for Business Units and functions, including the potential implications for design, verification, technical documentation, declarations, registrations, supply chain, service, digital systems and commercial activity.
• Lead Portfolio Resilience meetings and associated governance, ensuring that external changes are reviewed against current and future portfolios, risks and opportunities are identified, and decisions, actions and accountable owners are recorded.
• Ensure Portfolio Resilience outputs are cascaded to the appropriate Business Unit, category, project and functional forums, with significant risks, unresolved accountabilities or cross-business dependencies escalated to senior leadership and ExCo as appropriate.
• Maintain oversight of the portfolio resilience action framework, challenging progress, evidence and closure where potential regulatory or standards changes could threaten market access or delivery.
• Maintain and impact measure and score card for portfolio resilience.
• Direct and prioritise Dyson participation in relevant external compliance standard committees, trade associations and working groups, aligning external positions with technical evidence, business priorities and agreed governance.
• Coordinate subject-specific regulatory workstreams where an external change creates cross-functional obligations, while ensuring delivery ownership remains with the accountable business function.
• Develop and maintain searchable knowledge, reporting and visual portfolio views that provide traceability from external intelligence through impact assessment, decision, ownership, mitigation and closure.
• Monitor the effectiveness of the regulatory intelligence and Portfolio Resilience model, improving data quality, reporting, ways of working and integration with product and business planning processes.
• Ensure external intelligence is communicated accurately, with appropriate source traceability, confidentiality and control of uncertain or draft information.

Leadership (How)

• Provide day-to-day leadership of a global, multi-disciplinary External Affairs and regulatory intelligence team, setting priorities across regulatory horizon scanning, standards engagement and Portfolio Resilience governance.
• Grow and develop team capability, including organisation design, recruitment, retention, coaching and succession planning.
• Set clear standards for the quality, consistency and timeliness of regulatory intelligence, risk assessment, stakeholder communication and external representation.
• Build an effective network across Product Development, Research, NPI, Technology, Compliance and Approvals, Verification, Quality, Legal, Sustainability, Supply Chain and Operations, Service, Commercial and local market teams.
• Act as a trusted adviser to senior leaders on emerging regulatory and standards risks, portfolio exposure, strategic external engagement and the adequacy of proposed mitigation.
• Influence senior stakeholders to establish clear accountability for business and product changes arising from regulation, and hold owners to account through agreed governance.
• Create an open culture in which emerging risks, uncertainty and bad news are shared early, assessed objectively and converted into practical action.
• Represent Dyson, or ensure appropriate expert representation, in selected external forums where strategic engagement is required.

About you

Skills

• The ability to distil complex, incomplete or fast-moving regulatory and standards information into clear messages, choices and recommended actions.
• Strong strategic judgement, with the ability to connect external change to portfolio, market access, product development and business-process consequences.
• Excellent analytical and risk-assessment skills, including the ability to evaluate applicability, confidence, severity, timing, dependencies and mitigation options.
• Communication with impact at all levels of the organisation, including the ability to brief senior executives and facilitate decisions across competing priorities.
• Influence at scale, with the credibility and persistence to secure accountability and drive cross-functional change without direct authority.
• Excellent stakeholder management and facilitation skills, with the ability to chair complex governance forums and maintain productive external networks.
• High standards of evidence, source traceability and information quality, with sound judgement when communicating draft, uncertain or confidential intelligence.
• Ability to question and formally discuss legislation, regulations, international and national standards, conformity assessment, test methods and technical reports across multiple product categories.
• Commercial and portfolio awareness, with the ability to balance regulatory risk, technical feasibility, timing and business priorities.
• Resilience, composure, integrity and assertiveness, including willingness to communicate difficult messages and challenge unsupported assumptions.
• Highly motivated and self-driven, with strong planning, organisation and attention to detail; able to work independently while leading through a broad functional network.
• Prepared to travel globally to support business and external engagement requirements where needed.

Experience

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in engineering, science, regulatory affairs, standards, law, public policy or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• Significant experience in product regulatory compliance, regulatory intelligence, standardisation, external affairs or a closely related field within a global product or technology organisation.
• Demonstrable experience of interpreting emerging legislation and standards and converting them into portfolio-level risk assessments, business implications and mitigation plans.
• Experience of leading formal governance forums, cross-functional workstreams or portfolio reviews involving senior technical and business stakeholders.
• Experience of working with regulators, standards development organisations, trade or manufacturer associations, external working groups, market teams or specialist advisers.
• Established people leadership experience, including building capability and leading geographically distributed or multi-disciplinary teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with evidence of producing concise executive-level briefings and technically credible guidance.
• Experience across consumer products, electrical or connected products, sustainability, chemicals or materials, medical devices, cosmetics or other regulated product categories would be advantageous.

Dyson is an equal opportunity employer. We know that great minds don’t think alike, and it takes all kinds of minds to make our technology so unique. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and employment decisions are made without regard to race, colour, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, protected veteran status or other any other dimension of diversity.