Head of Financial Crime

The role

You will build and run the UK financial crime program, including AML/CTF, sanctions, fraud, KYC/CDD/EDD, transaction monitoring and SARs. You will report to the US BSA/AML Officer and work directly with Product and Engineering. You will also still work complex cases.

What you will do

• Design and run the UK financial crime programme: policy, procedures, CDD/EDD, risk rating, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, SAR handling, escalation, QA and training
• Turn MLR 2017, POCA, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act, JMLSG, the FCA Financial Crime Guide, SYSC 6.3 and payments/EMI expectations into workable processes
• Own the UK business-wide risk assessment and keep it current as products, customers and channels change
• Handle complex cases such as PEPs, adverse media, sanctions hits, high-risk onboarding, fraud typologies and escalations, and use them to improve the framework
• Set up first- and second-line controls: documentation, workflows, vendor oversight, quality sampling, MI and issue management
• Put UK requirements into the customer journey with Legal, Operations, Product and Engineering
• Report on quality, residual risk, throughput and control health; prepare for internal audit, skilled-person reviews and FCA scrutiny
• Build the operating model as the team grows
• Hire, coach and set the standard for the team
• Support MLRO / SMF17-adjacent duties as the UK permissions model requires

Required qualifications

• 8+ years of hands-on financial crime experience in a regulated UK firm (bank, EMI, PI, payments or e-money), including substantial KYC/CDD/EDD

Nice to have

• Ability to still do the cases and close gaps in a small team
• Working knowledge of the UK regime (MLR 2017, JMLSG, POCA, UK sanctions, FCA expectations) and how it applies to a payments product
• Experience designing or rebuilding a framework, procedure or control
• Experience leading people or a workstream, and explaining risk decisions to Product without jargon
• EU financial crime experience
• Experience with the EU AML package, 6AMLD, EBA guidelines, national transposition, or an EU FIU/regulator, especially on cross-border payments, wallets or EMI/PI products

Benefits

• Competitive base salary plus equity
• UK private medical covering GPs and specialists
• Pension
• Life insurance
• 25 days' paid time off
• Lunch and dinner allowance

Before you apply

• Recruitment is subject to the company's Recruitment Privacy Notice for data processing

About the company

SpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to help humanity understand the universe, including Colossus supercomputers, Grok models and applications such as Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice and X. It is an equal opportunity employer.