Senior Compliance Associate - Automation & Systems

As a Senior Compliance Associate at Payward, you join the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) Scale Team, which ensures the FIU can scale effectively across new operating jurisdictions and products. You lead transaction monitoring optimization and drive automation across FIU processes to support Payward's mission of advancing an open, global financial system while meeting regulatory obligations.

What you'll do

• Lead transaction monitoring optimization, including rule testing, threshold tuning, and the design and rollout of new monitoring scenarios to improve detection quality and reduce false positives
• Identify and drive automation and workflow improvements across FIU processes to increase operational efficiency and effectiveness
• Evaluate and implement emerging technologies, including LLM and AI-enabled tools, to enhance alert triage, investigations, SAR filing and FIU operational capabilities
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Operations to support vendor integrations, monitoring infrastructure improvements, and FIU tooling enhancements
• Collaborate with Compliance leadership, including RCOs and MLROs, to maintain well-governed transaction monitoring frameworks aligned with regulatory expectations
• Support FIU scalability by designing processes and monitoring strategies that enable expansion into new products, regions, and increased transaction volumes

What you bring

• 5+ years of experience in AML, financial crime compliance, or FIU operations, with deep knowledge of transaction monitoring frameworks, suspicious activity detection, and regulatory expectations under BSA/AML regimes
• 3+ years of experience designing, testing, and tuning transaction monitoring rules, including threshold optimization, scenario design, and alert reduction strategies
• 3+ years of experience working with transaction monitoring systems and compliance tooling, including case management platforms, monitoring infrastructure, and investigative workflows
• Experience working in a regulated financial institution, preferably one licensed to operate in the EU, UK, and/or United States
• Experience driving process optimization or automation initiatives within compliance or financial crime programs to improve operational efficiency and scalability
• Experience working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Data, or Operations teams to implement monitoring controls, vendor integrations, or compliance technology solutions
• Strong analytical and data interpretation skills, with experience using metrics, dashboards, and data analysis to evaluate monitoring effectiveness and improve detection quality
• Experience operating in fast-growing fintech, payments, or crypto environments, with the ability to design scalable compliance controls that support new product launches and geographic expansion
• Experience working with AI, machine learning, or LLM-enabled compliance tools, including investigative automation or alert triage technologies
• Familiarity with blockchain analytics tools such as Chainalysis, TRM Labs, Elliptic, or similar crypto investigative platforms
• Experience supporting vendor selection, implementation, or integration of regtech solutions

Nice to have

• ACAMS, CAMS-Audit, CFCS, or similar financial crime certifications

About Payward

Payward is the parent company behind Kraken, one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions globally. Kraken offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services for both individual investors and institutional clients.