Principal Architect redefining Financial Crimes Risk Management systems at Wells Fargo. Shaping architecture for AI - driven capabilities to prevent and respond to financial threats.
About the role
- Head of Financial Crime at Zopa leading the first line financial crime function. Shaping safe and commercially sustainable products while managing financial crime issues.
Responsibilities
- Embed first line financial crime expertise into product squads and operations teams, shaping risk-aware MVPs from early ideation.
- Design and build financial crime controls across KYC, screening, customer risk assessment, transaction monitoring, and SAR processes.
- Translate risk appetite into practical decisions, supporting teams with risk/cost/customer trade-offs and prioritisation.
- Promote a proportional, agile approach to controls and documentation, aligned to product maturity and delivery timelines.
- Define early risk indicators and monitoring plans with data teams, including telemetry, thresholds, and post-launch checks.
- Act as the senior financial crime escalation point, making balanced judgements on complex or sensitive cases.
- Build overall financial crime capability and resilience within the first line, avoiding dependency on single individuals.
- Partner with second line teams to align with policy, standards, and regulatory expectations while maintaining clear first line ownership.
Requirements
- Experience owning a broad range of financial crime controls, including TM rule design, onboarding/KYC flows, customer risk assessment models, and SAR processes (fintech or digital banking exposure beneficial).
- Comfortable operating in product-centric, agile environments and working closely with product and engineering teams.
- Proven ability to balance commercial and risk considerations, clearly articulate trade-offs, and support prioritisation in constrained environments.
- Track record of translating regulatory expectations into pragmatic, product-aligned solutions without unnecessary complexity.
- Experience acting as a senior escalation point, applying sound judgement on complex financial crime issues.
- Focus on capability-building: developing team skills, sharing expertise, and supporting resilient ways of working.
- Clear, outcome-focused communication style, connecting financial crime topics to product strategy, customer impact, and business goals.
- Confident using data to inform decisions, including defining thresholds, indicators, monitoring plans, and telemetry.
- Experience working in fast-moving, iterative environments with changing products and requirements.
- Strong collaboration skills, with a history of effective partnership across Product, Engineering, second line functions, and Operations.
Benefits
- Flexible ways of working
- Face-to-face collaboration
- Good work-life balance
- Working from abroad for up to 120 days a year
Job title
Job type
Experience level
Salary
Not specified
Degree requirement
Location requirements
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