Head of Compliance
Payward, Inc. is a global financial infrastructure company and the parent organization behind Kraken. It provides trading, custody, payments, lending, staking, tokenized assets, derivatives, and market data infrastructure to consumers, professional traders, institutions, enterprises, fintechs, banks, exchanges, asset managers, and onchain platforms.
Funding
Investors
About Payward, Inc.
Payward, Inc. operates a unified financial infrastructure platform powering a portfolio of products including Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, CF Benchmarks, and Payward Services. Its shared architecture provides global liquidity, risk and margin management, collateral and settlement, compliance and licensing, and operational infrastructure across crypto, tokenized assets, and traditional markets. Through Payward Services, the company offers APIs and infrastructure for crypto trading, custody, on/off-ramps, tokenized equities, derivatives, staking and yield, payments, and benchmark data. Payward operates across more than 190 jurisdictions and serves consumers, professional traders, institutional investors, enterprises, fintechs, banks, exchanges, asset managers, and DeFi/onchain protocols.
Skills
About the Role
You will lead the regulatory compliance framework and ensure effective systems, controls, governance, and reporting across Irish and EU obligations. You will oversee compliance monitoring, regulatory implementation and horizon scanning; advise the board; develop policies and training; review product risks and marketing; support licence applications; manage regulatory relationships; and lead a small compliance team.
Requirements
- Senior compliance experience in a managerial position at a regulated crypto exchange, payments firm, MiFID investment firm, MTF, or bank
- Experience leveraging technology and automation to scale regulatory compliance
- Experience implementing EU markets and traditional finance rules
- Experience managing regulator relationships
- Ability to influence conduct and present to executives and boards
- Experience with the CJA and CASP registrations
- Experience managing complex global compliance projects
- Compliance risk analysis and judgment
- Knowledge of compliance risk management techniques
- Compliance team leadership
- Financial crimes and markets compliance experience
Responsibilities
- Ensure ongoing compliance with regulatory requirements, including the CASP licence
- Develop and maintain trusted relationships with the Central Bank of Ireland
- Oversee implementation of new regulatory requirements, including AMLR, and manage horizon scanning
- Align products, services, and risk management with the Chief Compliance Officer, CEO, and colleagues
- Partner with the business to bring products and services to market quickly
- Implement operational efficiencies through automation
- Provide compliance advice and guidance to the board
- Oversee the Compliance Monitoring Programme
- Develop and operationalise policies and procedures for MiCA, AMLR, AML, and other regulations
- Prepare licence application documents to extend products and services
- Advise Product, Design, Engineering, and other teams on compliant product launches
- Review product risk assessments, marketing materials, complaints, and other matters for regulatory compliance
- Develop and deliver Irish and EU compliance training programs
- Foster compliance awareness and accountability through communication and training
Benefits
- Remote work
- Internal mobility
