Sr. Compliance Associate - Market Surveillance

About Kraken

Payward — the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services, and CF Benchmarks — has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.

Kraken's Market Surveillance function is responsible for detecting, investigating, and reporting market abuse across our regulated trading venues, spanning spot crypto markets, crypto futures, tokenised equities, OTC markets, and consumer trading. As our licensing footprint and product range grow, so does the scale and complexity of the surveillance programme behind them.

We are hiring several Senior Compliance Associates to carry out day-to-day surveillance across our markets, investigate what that surveillance uncovers, and help us build the programme out as the business grows.

The Opportunity

• Review and disposition surveillance alerts across our regulated markets, recording the reasoning behind each decision clearly enough that others can follow it.
• Carry out analytical reviews that begin with trade and order data rather than a system-generated alert.
• Investigate escalated behaviour end-to-end: gather the data, reconstruct what happened, and write it up for presentation to senior compliance stakeholders.
• Assess referrals raised from across the business and externally, taking forward those that warrant further action.
• Draft suspicious transaction and order reports (STORs) and suspicious activity reports (SARs).
• Produce management information and regulatory reporting for the entities we cover.
• Contribute to surveillance platform and tooling work, including bringing new products and data sources into scope and testing detection behavior.
• Use AI and automation tools to accelerate evidence-gathering and case reconstruction, with human judgement guiding the final call.

What You Bring

• At least 2 years of experience in trade surveillance, market abuse investigation, or trading conduct inside a regulated firm (e.g., exchange, broker-dealer, trading venue, bank, or comparable regulated trading business).
• Working knowledge of core market abuse typologies, such as spoofing, layering, wash trading, insider dealing, front running, and ramping.
• Experience reviewing and dispositioning surveillance alerts and documenting findings to regulatory standards.
• Clear, evidence-first written communication for case files and escalations evaluated by auditors and regulators.
• Comfort using generative AI and automation tools to enhance investigative speed and quality while maintaining required oversight.
• Based in the UK, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, Romania, or Canada, with fluency in English.

Nice to Haves

• Exposure to crypto-asset markets.
• Hands-on experience with surveillance platforms such as Scila, Nasdaq SMARTS, Eventus, or NICE Actimize.
• Proficiency in SQL or similar query tools for evidence-gathering.
• Experience drafting suspicious transaction and order reports (STORs) or suspicious activity reports (SARs).
• Experience with electronic communications surveillance.