About this Head of Financial Crimes Compliance role at Dakota
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