Senior Compliance Associate - Automation & Systems

About Kraken and Payward

Payward — the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services, and CF Benchmarks — has spent the last 15 years building modern, globally accessible financial infrastructure to advance an open financial system. Founded in 2011, Kraken is trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions worldwide, offering spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services.

The Team

The Compliance team at Payward enables the company to grow responsibly while navigating evolving regulatory environments across jurisdictions and product lines.

The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) Scale Team ensures the FIU can scale effectively across operating jurisdictions and products. The team leads AML transaction monitoring and blockchain monitoring to calibrate thresholds, reduce false positives, and maintain robust governance. Scale also drives process workflow automation across the FIU, working closely with external vendors, Compliance, and engineering teams.

The Opportunity

• Lead transaction monitoring optimization, including rule testing, threshold tuning, and the 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 capabilities.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Operations teams to support vendor integrations, monitoring infrastructure improvements, and tooling enhancements.
• Collaborate with Compliance leadership, including RCOs and MLROs, to maintain well-governed transaction monitoring frameworks aligned with regulatory standards.
• Support FIU scalability by designing monitoring strategies that enable expansion into new products, regions, and higher transaction volumes.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of experience in AML, financial crime compliance, or FIU operations, with deep knowledge of transaction monitoring frameworks and BSA/AML regulatory expectations.
• 3+ years of experience designing, testing, and tuning transaction monitoring rules, including threshold optimization, scenario design, and alert reduction.
• 3+ years of experience working with transaction monitoring systems, compliance tooling, case management platforms, and investigative workflows.
• Experience working in a regulated financial institution, preferably licensed in the EU, UK, or United States.
• Proven track record driving process optimization or automation initiatives within compliance or financial crime programs.
• Experience collaborating cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Data, or Operations teams to implement monitoring controls and regtech solutions.
• Strong analytical and data interpretation skills using metrics and dashboards to evaluate monitoring effectiveness.
• Experience operating in fast-growing fintech, payments, or crypto environments.
• Experience working with AI, machine learning, or LLM-enabled compliance tools for alert triage or investigations.
• Familiarity with blockchain analytics tools such as Chainalysis, TRM Labs, Elliptic, or similar crypto investigative platforms.
• Experience supporting vendor selection, implementation, or integration of compliance technology solutions.

Nice to Haves

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