Regulatory Affairs Manager

Tokyo, Japan · Full-time · Manager

A regulatory seat where you set the strategy, not just monitor the notices.

BAT is a global multi-category consumer goods business. Our purpose is to create A Better Tomorrow™, with a vision to build a smokeless world — as at 31 December 2025, 34.1m consumers used our Smokeless Products, generating 18.2% of Group revenue. A category changing this quickly gets regulated in real time, and Japan is one of the markets where the framework is still being written. That is the environment you would be working in.

The role
You read the regulatory and policy environment, work out what it means for the business, and tell senior leaders what to do about it. Then you run the plan — campaigns, engagement, industry work — and you're accountable for whether it moved anything. This is a small team, which means your analysis goes to leadership with your name on it rather than someone else's.

What you'll own

• The view on where regulation and policy are heading in Japan, and what that means commercially — supported by data, not instinct

• Recommendations that reduce regulatory risk and open up business options, with the trade-offs made explicit

• The material that goes to senior leadership — in Japanese and English — turning complex regulatory questions into something a decision-maker can act on in ten minutes

• Planning and delivery of regulatory and policy initiatives, from stakeholder mapping through to execution

• Engagement with external stakeholders including industry associations, alongside our external affairs leadership

• Alignment across Legal, public policy, the business units and global teams, so we say the same thing in every room

• The measures of whether the work landed, and the honesty to change approach when it didn't

What you'll bring

• A data-driven approach — you argue from evidence and are comfortable being challenged on it

• A track record of building material for executive audiences and structuring complexity into a clear argument

• The ability to run projects independently, across functions and across borders

Qualifications

• 5–10 years in regulatory affairs, public affairs, government affairs or regulatory strategy. Government, consulting or industry association backgrounds are all relevant

• Fluent Japanese. Business-level English is enough — your understanding of the Japanese regulatory environment is what we're hiring, and we provide structured English training on company time