Our paper examines the rise of a new category of professional support staff whom we refer to as 'audit-market intermediaries' in the context of a rapidly changing regulatory and funding environment in British higher education. We explore the roles they play in articulating environmental changes in research-intensive universities related to the auditing of teaching via demands for quality assurance and the marketisation of higher education via the rise of the student as a fee-paying consumer. The qualitative data reveals the internal and external sources of legitimacy and power of the audit-market intermediaries as well their contestation. We show how these actors serve as mediators of audit and market forces undertaking institutional work by translating, amplifying or buffering-related pressures within the university; and point at the relevance of the specific organisational context for understanding differing patterns of their institutional work.