Senior Transaction Monitoring Analyst

The role

You will build, operate, and improve a transaction monitoring program. This involves designing monitoring rules, analyzing payment activity, and investigating suspicious transactions.

What you will do

• Design, build, test, and maintain monitoring rules across payment rails.
• Develop risk-based scenarios for typologies like structuring and velocity anomalies.
• Backtest and tune rules to improve detection and reduce false positives.
• Investigate potentially suspicious transactions and customer activity.
• Document findings and dispositions with investigative narratives.
• Prepare and submit suspicious activity referrals to sponsor banks.
• Use SQL to query transaction data and evaluate monitoring performance.
• Report on alert volumes, false-positive rates, and rule performance.
• Work with Product and Engineering on monitoring capabilities and workflows.
• Support sponsor-bank inquiries, audits, and examinations.

Required qualifications

• 4+ years in BSA/AML, financial crimes compliance, or transaction monitoring within fintech, payments, or banking.
• Hands-on experience designing, implementing, and tuning monitoring rules.
• Track record of independently conducting complex investigations and escalating suspicious activity.
• Strong command of BSA/AML requirements, financial crimes typologies, and risk-based monitoring.
• Working knowledge of payment rails, particularly ACH, RTP, and debit networks.
• Experience managing alert queues while maintaining quality and timeliness.
• Ability to work independently and cross-functionally in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong SQL skills for querying and analyzing large transaction datasets.
• Experience configuring, testing, and optimizing rules in platforms such as Unit21, Sardine, Actimize, or Verafin.
• Ability to translate detection requirements into rule logic.
• Experience using data to evaluate rule effectiveness and reduce false positives.
• Working knowledge of API-driven payment architecture and rails including ACH/NACHA, RTP, FedNow, and Visa Direct.

Nice to have

• Bachelor's degree in finance, economics, computer science, criminal justice, or a related field
• CAMS, CFE, or equivalent certification
• Experience at a payments fintech, BaaS company, or processor operating under a sponsor-bank model
• Prior experience building or significantly improving a transaction monitoring program
• Exposure to complex use cases such as embedded finance, payroll, lending, card disbursements, or real-time payments
• Python or similar tools for transaction analysis, rule testing, or automation
• Familiarity with model validation, rule governance, and sponsor-bank expectations
• Startup experience spanning technical implementation and day-to-day compliance operations

Benefits

• Competitive compensation with equity
• Remote-first culture with flexible working arrangements
• Professional growth opportunities in compliance and risk management

Before you apply

• Hiring only within the U.S.

About the company

Astra is building mission-critical infrastructure for moving money at scale. Their platform processes billions in annual transaction volume to power real-time transfers and financial compliance systems.