Sr. Compliance Associate - Market Surveillance

Building the Future of Open Finance

Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

The team

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.

Kraken's Market Surveillance function is responsible for detecting, investigating and reporting market abuse across our regulated trading venues, spanning spot crypto markets, crypto futures, tokenised equities, OTC markets and consumer trading. As our licensing footprint and product range grow, so does the scale and complexity of the surveillance programme behind them.

We are hiring several Senior Compliance Associates to carry out day to day surveillance across our markets, investigate what that surveillance uncovers, and help us build the programme out as the business grows.

The opportunity

• Review and disposition surveillance alerts across our regulated markets, and record the reasoning behind each decision clearly enough that someone else can follow it.

• Carry out analytical reviews that begin with trade and order data rather than with a system-generated alert.

• Investigate escalated behaviour end to end: gather the data, reconstruct what happened, and write it up for presentation to senior compliance stakeholders.

• Assess referrals raised from across the business and externally, and take forward the ones that warrant it.

• Draft suspicious transaction and order reports and suspicious activity reports.

• Produce management information and regulatory reporting for the entities we cover.

• Contribute to surveillance platform and tooling work, including bringing new products and data sources into scope and testing that detection behaves as intended.

• Use AI and automation tools to speed up evidence-gathering and case reconstruction, with human judgement over the final call.

What you bring

• At least 2 years experience in trade surveillance, market abuse investigation or trading conduct inside a regulated firm, such as an exchange, broker-dealer, trading venue, bank or comparable regulated trading business.

• Working knowledge of the core market abuse typologies, for example spoofing, layering, wash trading, insider dealing, front running and ramping.

• Experience reviewing and dispositioning surveillance alerts, and writing up what you found to a standard others can rely on.

• Clear, evidence-first written communication. Your case files and escalations will sometimes be read by auditors and regulators without you in the room to explain them.

• Comfort using generative AI and other automation tools to improve the speed and quality of investigative work, while maintaining the oversight that regulated casework requires.

• Based in the UK, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, Romania or Canada, with fluency in English.

Nice to haves

• Exposure to crypto-asset markets is welcomed but not required.

• Hands-on use of a surveillance platform such as Scila, Nasdaq SMARTS, Eventus or NICE Actimize.

• SQL or a similar query tool for evidence-gathering.

• Experience drafting suspicious transaction and order reports or suspicious activity reports.

• Electronic communications surveillance experience.

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.

Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Our commitment

Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.

As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

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