Head of Financial Crimes Compliance

About Dakota

Dakota is a stablecoin infrastructure platform powering modern financial products through regulated money movement, stablecoin orchestration, and cross-border settlement. We serve institutional clients - fintechs, payment service providers, marketplaces, and enterprises - through an API-first platform that abstracts the complexity of custody, compliance, settlement, and banking partnerships.

We are a remote first team across North America and Europe. We value high quality work, clear thinking and ownership.

Key responsibilities

Financial risk and advisory

• Serve as senior FCC point of contact and SME on fiat and digital assets; contribute to the FCC framework.
• Identify and assess money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions, fraud and other illicit finance risks across digital asset products, clients, counterparties and transaction flows, including blockchain, wallets, custody models, and stablecoins.
• Provide risk-based advice and effective challenge across the product and client lifecycle: new initiatives, product approvals, onboarding and material changes.
• Assess cross-business and cross-regional impacts, promoting consistent minimum standards and documented treatment of regional variances.

Controls and program oversight

• Partner with first-line and other teams to design, enhance and oversee controls for CDD/EDD and KYC, sanctions screening, blockchain analytics, transaction monitoring, case management, investigations, suspicious activity escalation and recordkeeping.
• Review AML programs and internal control structures, including automated solutions, through policy and procedure reviews, gap analyses, risk assessments and regulatory compliance assessments.
• Identify and escalate material risks and control weaknesses, and oversee agreed remediation.

FCC technology, models and data

• Lead implementation of FCC technology solutions, including onboarding blockchain analytics and digital asset intelligence vendors and managing vendor relationships.
• Develop transaction monitoring scenarios aligned to products, services and risk appetite.
• Lead testing, tuning and optimization of transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, customer risk rating and detection, before production and on an ongoing basis.
• Validate AML models across those same areas.
• Perform and oversee data reconciliation, lineage and quality testing; interpret complex analyses to identify patterns, risks and conclusions.
• Improve data quality, system capabilities and automation to strengthen preventive and detective controls.

Regulatory engagement and governance

• Monitor new laws, regulations, guidance, enforcement actions and industry practice, and translate them into practical requirements and action plans.
• Support engagement with regulators, auditors and independent reviewers, including exam preparation, information requests and remediation of findings, as necessary.
• Develop policies, procedures, training, metrics, and governance materials for senior stakeholders and committees.

Leadership and relationships

• Lead multiple complex FCC initiatives from initiation to completion, on time, within budget and to stakeholder expectations.
• Manage teams, delegating effectively to managers and mentoring junior and mid-level staff, while still being hands-on.
• Build strong relationships with executives, business, technology, Risk and Audit partners, and industry forums or trade associations.
• Lead stakeholder discussions, identify new opportunities to add value, and deliver special projects as assigned.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in Financial Crime Compliance, Compliance, Legal, Risk, Internal Audit or a related control function, preferably at a financial institution or regulated digital assets business.
• Practical experience in legal, financial, technical, risk or compliance background is preferred.
• Deep knowledge of AML, CTF, sanctions and fraud risk frameworks, including CDD, transaction monitoring, investigations, regulatory reporting and common typologies.
• Working knowledge of blockchain and digital assets, or experience assessing financial crime risk in new products, technologies or payment models.
• Track record building controls for digital assets risk, including work with blockchain analytics vendors.
• Experience conducting risk assessments and designing, implementing or overseeing financial crime controls.
• Hands-on design and implementation of FCC technology, including transaction monitoring rule development, tuning and CIP systems, and TM systems.

Skills and attributes

• Analytical: understands complex product structures, workflows, transaction flows and data dependencies; analyzes issues independently and turns conclusions into actionable recommendations.
• Regulatory interpretation: translates complex, evolving expectations into practical guidance, control requirements and executable plans.
• Communication: excellent written, verbal and presentation skills; explains complex issues, risk decisions and metrics clearly to all levels, including senior management.
• Collaboration and influence: works across functions and regions with positive intent, influences stakeholders and provides constructive, independent challenge.
• Delivery: strong project, time and change management; prioritizes multiple initiatives under time constraints in a dynamic environment.
• Mindset: strategic, inquisitive, proactive and solutions-oriented; anticipates emerging trends and favors sustainable control enhancement and appropriate automation.
• Discretion: handles sensitive and confidential information and treats colleagues with compassion and respect.

How We Work

At Dakota, we value people who:

• Strive for excellence
• Practice extreme ownership.
• Experiment fearlessly and learn quickly.
• Stay close to customers.
• Communicate clearly and directly.

What We Offer

• Engaging problems that increase economic freedom globally
• Competitive salary and equity
• Remote work, no commuting to the office
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Regular team events and off-sites