About the role
As Shopify's payments and money-movement footprint grows across the US, EU, UK, and beyond, we are building the AML program that scales with it. Our mission is to build detection, investigation, and reporting capabilities that hold up under regulator, bank-partner, and card-brand scrutiny while staying fast enough to keep pace with the business.
We are hiring the founding manager of our AML Transaction Monitoring function. This is a hands-on people-leadership role for a seasoned AML practitioner who wants to build a team, not just run one. You will stand up and lead the analysts who own the daily flow of AML operations across Shopify's payments and money-movement products: alert triage, transaction monitoring cases, investigation quality, SAR filings, and escalations. You will work closely with teams such as Product, Engineering, Risk, Trust, Legal, and Data Science, as well as our external bank, acquirer, and card-brand partners.
Our ideal candidate has done this work themselves inside a regulated payments or money-movement business, has led people (formally or informally), and knows how to raise the bar on investigation craft. You are pragmatic, data-literate, and comfortable making judgment calls under regulatory scrutiny.
Responsibilities:
Team and craft: Build, coach, and grow a team of AML TM analysts, holding a high bar for case craft and SAR narrative quality.
AML operations execution: Own the end-to-end TM workflow: alert triage, case investigation, SAR filings, escalations, and program metrics.
Detection quality: Partner with Compliance, detection engineering, and data science on rule tuning, model performance, and false-positive reduction across Shopify's payment flows.
Exam and audit readiness: Own AML TM readiness for regulator exams, internal audit, and sponsoring bank, acquirer, and card-brand reviews across the regions we operate in.
Program coverage: Keep AML TM playbooks, procedures, and detection coverage current as products and geographies evolve, surfacing and closing gaps.
Translate FCC strategy into concrete weekly team priorities. Cut what isn't earning its keep and keep the team focused on what matters.
Represent AML TM in cross-functional forums with Product, Risk, Legal, and external bank, acquirer, and card-brand partners.
Qualifications:
A proven track record in AML Transaction Monitoring within a payments or money-movement business (bank, acquirer, processor, fintech, or similar), including hands-on experience working alerts, cases, and investigations end-to-end.
Experience leading people, with direct people-management experience strongly preferred. If you have not formally managed, you have led in practice: owning cases end-to-end, coaching investigators, and setting the quality bar for others.
Working knowledge of AML regulations and money-laundering typologies, including BSA/AML, sanctions, SAR filing, and CDD/EDD frameworks in the US and/or EU.
Direct experience with AML operations workflows: alert queues, case management, quality review, and metrics.
Reflexive use of AI. You default to AI tools to accelerate triage, investigation, pattern detection, and drafting, and you push your team to do the same.
Comfort with data. You can read a query result, spot a pattern, and push back on a rule that isn't earning its keep.
Excellent written and verbal communication and strong attention to detail, especially in SAR narratives and regulator-facing documentation.
A bias for execution. You move fast, prioritize ruthlessly, and hold the line on quality.
Nice to have:
AML program experience at fintechs, payment facilitators, e-money institutions, or wallet products.
CAMS, ICA Diploma, or equivalent AML certification.
Experience preparing for or responding to regulator or bank-partner AML reviews (FinCEN, state MTL regulators, FCA, CSSF, ACPR).
Hands-on experience with case management and TM platforms (Actimize, Verafin, Hummingbird, or in-house tooling).
Data analytics skills (SQL, Google Sheets, Excel).