About the Role
You will be the accountable individual for licensing acquisition in Canada and for AML/CFT, sanctions, and regulatory governance after license approval. You will maintain the company's compliance and financial crime frameworks within Canada, ensuring adherence to laws, license conditions, and supervisory expectations, as well as Transak's Group Compliance standards. This is a hands-on leadership role where you'll balance strategic regulatory responsibilities with operational oversight. You will handle suspicious activity reporting, transaction monitoring effectiveness, licensing obligations, and regulatory relationship management, while embedding compliance requirements across Product, Engineering, Operations, and Risk. You will report to the Group Head of Compliance.
Requirements
- 5–7+ years in AML/CFT, compliance, or financial crime
- Experience as MLRO, Deputy MLRO, or senior Compliance Officer
- Demonstrated experience managing licenses/regulatory obligations in the target jurisdiction
- SAR/STR drafting experience; strong investigative ability
- Experience handling audits, inspections, regulator interactions
- Ability to marry regulatory requirements with business objectives to maximize revenue while keeping within risk appetite
- Crypto experience
- ICA/ACAMS certification (nice-to-have)
- Blockchain analytics exposure (nice-to-have)
- Experience in product compliance or technical environments (nice-to-have)
Responsibilities
- Apply for, maintain, and vary regulatory licenses in accordance with business requirements
- Act as main point-of-contact with FINTRAC
- Maintain compliance and AML policies, risk assessments, and control frameworks
- Ensure accurate, complete regulatory submissions
- Maintain compliance registers and evidence libraries
- Advise internal teams on licensing constraints and regulatory expectations
- Receive, assess, and investigate suspicious activity escalations
- Draft and file SARs/STRs with structured, evidence-based narratives
- Identify financial crime patterns and typologies
- Conduct thematic reviews and risk assessments
- Maintain SAR documentation and ensure timeliness
- Oversee high-risk KYB, corporate/OTC KYB, and EDD workflows
- Conduct 4-eye reviews on critical decisions and token listing due diligence
- Ensure process consistency across monitoring, screening, and onboarding
- Maintain audit-ready documentation and evidence quality
- Calibrate country level requirements for PEPs & sanctions screening
- Review escalated sanctions/PEP cases and determine true/false matches
- Lead escalation to regulators when necessary
- Support sanctions rule tuning and ongoing improvements
- Act as primary contact for regulators and auditors
- Manage inspections, audits, thematic reviews, and information requests
- Provide structured, comprehensive documentation
- Maintain proactive, transparent regulatory relationships
- Define AML/CFT, sanctions, and licensing requirements for new features
- Translate regulatory obligations into technical specifications and acceptance criteria
- Review product changes for compliance implications
- Support validation/testing of product workflows for correct control functioning
- Maintain ongoing awareness of upcoming regulatory changes
- Provide compliance guidance to Operations, Product, Engineering, Risk, Customer Support
- Tailor communication of regulatory requirements to audience expertise
- Represent Compliance internally as SME in critical discussions and planning
- Deliver AML/CFT, sanctions, and risk-awareness training
- Promote consistent documentation standards and escalation behaviors
- Support the Group Head in maintaining the Transak Group Compliance Program