Head of Financial Crime
xAI· Safety
Londonfull-timePosted 2mo ago
About the role
Leader for the UK financial crime programme within SpaceXSI, responsible for designing and running the end-to-end UK financial crime framework (AML/CTF, sanctions, fraud, ABC, KYC/CDD/EDD, transaction monitoring, SARs) in a builder role with direct impact on operations and FCA alignment.
Responsibilities
- Design and run the UK financial crime programme: policy, procedures, CDD/EDD, risk rating, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, SAR handling, escalation, QA, and training.
- Turn MLR 2017, POCA, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act, JMLSG, the FCA Financial Crime Guide, SYSC 6.3, and payments/EMI expectations into operations and product requirements.
- Own the UK business-wide risk assessment and maintain it as the product, customer mix, and channels evolve.
- Handle complex cases — PEPs, adverse media, sanctions hits, high-risk onboarding, fraud typologies, escalations — and use the queue to fix the framework.
- Stand up first- and second-line controls: documentation, workflows, vendor oversight, quality sampling, MI, and issue management.
- Integrate UK requirements into the customer journey with Legal, Operations, Product, and Engineering; represent the UK in global design decisions.
- Report on quality, residual risk, throughput, and control health; prepare the programme for internal audit, skilled-person reviews, and FCA scrutiny.
- Build the operating model as the team grows; hire, coach, and set standards; support MLRO / SMF17-adjacent duties as the UK permissions model requires.
Qualifications
- 8+ years of hands-on financial crime in a regulated UK firm (bank, EMI, PI, payments, or e-money), including substantial KYC/CDD/EDD.
- Strong knowledge of UK regime (MLR 2017, JMLSG, POCA, UK sanctions, FCA expectations) and how it applies to payments products.
- Experience designing or rebuilding a framework, procedure, or control (not just policy writing).
- Experience leading people or a workstream and defending risk decisions to Product teams.
- Willingness to directly handle cases and close gaps in a small team.
Skills
Required:KYC/CDD/EDDAML/CTFSanctions complianceRegulatory framework design
Benefits
- Competitive base + equity
- UK private medical covering GPs and specialists; pension; life insurance
- 25 days’ paid time off; lunch and dinner allowance
Last updated Oct 14, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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