BSA Officer

Dakota

4d•Remote

About The Position

Dakota is hiring a BSA Officer to formally lead and operate our financial crimes program as we scale into increasingly complex regulatory environments, including our pending federal trust charter. This role reports directly into the Chief Compliance Officer and serves as Dakota's designated BSA Officer for the federal trust charter entity, with SAR decisioning and filing authority and direct responsibility for the day-to-day execution, integrity, and defensibility of our AML and sanctions programs. You will also provide senior oversight across all US financial crimes programs — including our MTL entities, which will have their own designated BSA Officer — and act as a compliance program manager, helping uplevel our onboarding and transaction monitoring programs over time. If the Chief Compliance Officer designs the regulatory architecture, you ensure it works in production. Dakota operates at the intersection of traditional payments and blockchain-based settlement. The risk surface includes fiat-to-stablecoin orchestration, digital asset custody, cross-border settlement, and B2B and B2B2C operating models. This is not a static AML program — it is a dynamic, evolving financial crimes environment that must scale with the platform. If you are motivated by ownership, complexity, and building a defensible AML program inside a scaling infrastructure company that is moving into federal charter territory, this role offers meaningful scope.

Requirements

You have 8+ years of experience in BSA/AML, financial crime, or regulatory compliance within a regulated financial institution, fintech, payments company, or digital asset business.
You have been through at least one regulatory examination cycle and understand what regulators expect — not just in theory, but in documentation, evidence, and execution. You are comfortable being hands-on: reviewing cases, making SAR decisions, tuning rules, and building dashboards, not just supervising others. You understand the difference between compliance theater and real risk management.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience serving as a designated BSA Officer or Deputy BSA Officer
SAR decisioning and filing authority experience
Experience preparing for and responding to state or federal AML examinations, including trust charter or bank charter environments
Familiarity with stablecoin or digital asset transaction monitoring
Experience with transaction monitoring systems (Unit21 or similar), KYC/KYB providers, and blockchain analytics tools
Experience managing external investigative vendors
Exposure to cross-border or multi-jurisdictional compliance programs

Responsibilities

Own Financial Crime Program Execution
Serve as Dakota's formally designated BSA Officer for FinCEN, applicable state regulators, and the federal trust charter entity
Hold SAR decisioning and filing authority
Oversee Dakota's BSA/AML, sanctions, and transaction monitoring programs across all US entities
Ensure monitoring systems are tuned, effective, and defensible
Manage alert review, investigations, SAR filings, and escalation workflows
Maintain documentation discipline and audit-ready program artifacts
Coordinate independent testing and remediation tracking
Support regulatory examinations, audits, and remediation efforts
Lead and Scale the AML Compliance Team
Directly manage and develop a growing AMLteam (currently two team members, with near-term expansion planned)
Oversee external analysts and overflow support partners, including Ankura
Build operating rhythms, case quality standards, and escalation clarity
Design hiring plans and org structure as volume scales
Partner Deeply with Engineering
Work closely with product and engineering to embed controls into infrastructure — not layer them on after the fact
Optimize and evolve Dakota's compliance tooling stack (Sumsub, Unit21, TRM Labs)
Contribute to rule design, threshold tuning, and monitoring enhancements
Identify opportunities for responsible automation and AI leverage
Support Multi-Jurisdictional Coordination
Provide senior oversight across all US financial crimes programs, including MTL entities
Act as the primary regulatory point of contact for financial crimes across US examinations as Dakota advances through trust charter and federal charter supervision
Coordinate financial crime monitoring as Dakota expands into Europe, aligning US BSA program requirements with emerging MiCA and EMI expectations
Ensure appropriate risk posture across US compliance programs