Financial Crime Risk Manager - 12 month FTC

About us

GoCardless is a global bank payment company. Over 100,000 businesses, from start-ups to household names, use GoCardless to collect and send payments through direct debit, real-time payments and open banking.

GoCardless processes US$130bn+ of payments annually, across 30+ countries; helping customers collect and send both recurring and one-off payments, without the chasing, stress or expensive fees. We use AI-powered solutions to improve payment success and reduce fraud. And, with open banking connectivity to over 2,500 banks, we help our customers make faster, more informed decisions.

We are headquartered in the UK with offices in London and Leeds, and additional locations in Australia, France, Ireland, Latvia, Portugal and the United States.

At GoCardless, we're all about supporting you! We’re committed to making our hiring process inclusive and accessible. If you need extra support or adjustments, reach out to your Talent Partner - we’re here to help!

And remember: we don’t expect you to meet every single requirement. If you’re excited by this role, we encourage you to apply!

The Role

As the Second Line of Defence (2LoD) subject matter expert, the Financial Crime Risk Manager will report directly to the Group MLRO and will play both a regional and global role. In this role, you will be primarily tasked with building and maintaining effective AML/CTF, ABC, and sanctions systems and controls to ensure compliance with laws and regulations in various GoCardless locations.

This is a 12 month fixed term contract.

What excites you

• Conducting end-to-end investigations into suspicious activity, gathering and analysing transactional and customer evidence to assess internal disclosures, and preparing and submitting Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to the National Crime Agency (NCA) and other FIUs where reportable grounds for suspicion are identified
• Day-to-day oversight of the compliance team's JIRA request queue - Unusual Activity Reports (UARs), policy advisory, partner bank queries, FCDDQs, and ad hoc queries - triaging, prioritising, and allocating incoming work across the team, driving each item through to resolution, while executing tasks directly where technical fit and capacity allow;
• Executing the firm’s annual financial crime Enterprise-wide Risk Assessments (EWRA), including risk identification, data analysis, inherent risk assessment and control evaluation. Keeping EWRA methodology up-to-date;
• Closely follow legal, compliance, and regulatory developments in relation to AML/CTF, ABC, and sanctions in the Fintech industry, to ensure our processes keep pace;
• Drafting annual external reports and regulatory returns to the authorities, and acting as a point of contact for the FCA, NCA, and other law enforcement agencies, including in ongoing criminal investigations that commenced from a submitted SAR;
• New products, markets business partnerships/initiatives risk assessments and programme updates;
• Drafting financial crime management information and periodic reports to senior management, analysing trends and recommending enhancements to first line controls;
• Delivering targeted financial crime training to the Compliance Operations team and Sales team on areas that are identified as requiring improvement;
• Advising on CDD escalations based on internal policies and procedures;
• Monitoring and responding to AML / Sanctions-related escalations in JIRA;
• Reviewing and approving of high-risk customers at onboarding (e.g. PEPs);
• Reviewing and approving of requests for waivers, dispensations and minor policy exceptions from the first line defence;
• Promoting a culture of good financial crime management across the firm;
• Covering MLRO annual leave / absences
• Supporting on the Financial Crime Risk roadmap projects to design and deploy controls over new products, new markets, and enhancements throughout the company;

• Support the wider Compliance based on capacity, need and expertise.

What excites us

• You have 5+ years’ experience in financial crime within the 2 LoD of an FCA regulated financial services firm or within consultancy;
• You have strong working knowledge of regulatory frameworks, guidelines, and requirements across the UK, US, EU, New Zealand, Australia, and/or Canada, as well as bodies like the FATF, Wolfsberg Group, etc.;
• You have experience in designing internal controls from scratch and driving their implementation, including automation where feasible;
• You have worked within a fast growing, scale-up business;
• You have experience conducting AML/CTF and sanctions compliance monitoring reviews, including model calibration and validation;
• You have exceptional analytical, writing and presentation skills;
• You have a 'sleeves-rolled-up' approach to your work.

Base salary range: Competitive

Base salary ranges are based on role, job level, location, and market data. We strive to offer competitive compensation, taking into account level of experience, interview assessment, budgets, regional benchmarking, and parity between you and fellow employees at GoCardless doing similar work.

(some of) The good stuff

• Wellbeing - stay healthy with dedicated support and medical cover
• Work away scheme - gives you the option to work away from your country of residence for up to 90 days in any 12 month period
• Adaptive Working - allows you to work flexibly, around your lifestyle
• Parental leave - to suit everyone embarking on life's great adventure
• Learning Budget - lead your own development with an annual learning budget
• Time off - generous holiday allowance, + 3 annual volunteer days, + 4 annual business-wide wellness days (‘GC Fridays’)

Life at GoCardless

We're an organisation defined by our values; We start with why before we begin any project, to ensure it’s aligned with our mission. We act with integrity, always. We care deeply about what we do and we know it's essential that we be humble whilst we do it. Working this way creates the GC magic- the reason we all love showing up to work.

Diversity & Inclusion

As of April 2025, we had 806 employees (GeeCees) globally, with 524 based in the UK, 163 based in Latvia and 119 across our other offices.

To ensure that we're representative of the world around us - and to be able to review relevant benchmarks - we ask GeeCees to voluntarily disclose diversity data. This year, the proportion of GeeCees providing data increased to 88% (up from 79% in 2024). With regards to diversity within GoCardless, we can see GeeCees identifying as:

Asian, Black, Mixed or Other - 25%

Neurodiverse - 9%

LGBTQIA+ - 9%

Disabled - 1%

Average age - 33

Female - 45%

Male - 55%

We’re rooting for you during your application and GoCardless aims to provide reasonable adjustments to make our recruitment process as remarkable and accessible as we can. Please speak to your Talent Partner if you need extra support.

If you want to learn more, you can read about our Employee Resource Groups and objectives here

Sustainability

We’re committed to reducing our impact on the environment, leaving a more sustainable world for future generations. Check out our sustainability action plan here.

Find out more about Life at GoCardless via Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.