Director, Financial Crime Operations

GoFundMe•San Francisco, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

GoFundMe is seeking a Director, Financial Crime Operations to lead its first-line financial crime function, including Transaction Monitoring and EDD & Investigations. This role is responsible for building and scaling operational capabilities to detect, investigate, and escalate higher-risk financial activity across the platform. It is a high-impact leadership role within Trust & Safety and Risk. The Director, Financial Crime Operations will manage operational teams, strengthen investigative quality, partner with Product and Data on risk controls, and work closely with Compliance to ensure the program is effective, scalable, and aligned with GoFundMe’s regulatory obligations.

Requirements

8+ years of experience managing in financial crime, AML operations, transaction monitoring, EDD, investigations, fraud/risk operations, or related fields.
Experience leading teams in fintech, payments, banking, marketplace, money movement, or another regulated financial services environment.
Strong understanding of AML, financial crime typologies, transaction monitoring, customer risk, EDD, and suspicious activity escalation.
Experience managing Transaction Monitoring and/or investigations teams.
Strong operational leadership skills, including workflow design, quality management, metrics, staffing, and escalation management.
Ability to partner effectively with Compliance while understanding the difference between first-line execution and second-line oversight.
Experience working with Product, Data, Engineering, and vendor/tooling teams to improve risk controls and operational effectiveness.
Strong analytical judgment and ability to translate complex risk patterns into clear operational actions.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive-ready reporting and clear investigative standards.
Comfortable operating in ambiguity and building structure in a fast-moving environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience with case management systems, transaction monitoring tools, KYC/KYB vendors, device intelligence tools, adverse media tools, or similar risk platforms preferred.
CAMS, CFE, or equivalent credential strongly preferred, but not required if offset by deep experience.
Strong alignment with GoFundMe’s core values: impatient to be great, find a way, earn trust every day, fueled by purpose.

Responsibilities

Lead GoFundMe’s first-line Financial Crime function, including Transaction Monitoring and EDD & Investigations.
Build a scalable operating model for financial crime detection, investigation, escalation, and decision support.
Develop clear team responsibilities, workflows, SLAs, quality standards, and escalation paths.
Partner closely with Compliance, Legal, Product, Data, Engineering, Payments, and Trust & Safety leadership.
Oversee the Transaction Monitoring team responsible for reviewing AML alerts, transaction patterns, and suspicious activity indicators.
Partner with Product, Data, and Compliance on rule/scenario development, tuning, coverage, and effectiveness.
Ensure monitoring outputs are well-documented, risk-based, and appropriately escalated.
Identify emerging typologies relevant to crowdfunding, payments, money movement, and platform abuse.
Oversee the EDD & Investigations team responsible for enhanced reviews of higher-risk customers, activity, and escalations.
Ensure high-quality investigative work, including source of funds/source of wealth review, customer risk analysis, use-of-funds assessment, and case documentation.
Support clear recommendations on risk disposition, account restrictions, offboarding, or escalation.
Partner with Compliance on SAR-related escalations, ensuring L1 investigative work supports L2 Compliance decisioning and filing governance.
Partner with Product and Engineering to embed financial crime controls into platform and payments workflows.
Help define data needs, tooling requirements, case management improvements, and automation opportunities.
Partner on vendor/tooling strategy, including monitoring systems, identity/KYC tools, device intelligence, adverse media, and other risk signals.
Use operational insights to improve detection quality and reduce unnecessary manual review.
Create quality expectations for financial crime reviews, investigations, and escalations.
Use metrics to manage team performance, backlog health, alert quality, typology coverage, and operational risk.
Develop reporting for senior leadership on financial crime trends, operational health, emerging risks, and control effectiveness.
Build a strong partnership with L2 Compliance while maintaining clear first-line ownership of operational execution.
Lead, coach, and develop managers and analysts across Transaction Monitoring and EDD & Investigations.
Create clarity, accountability, and strong judgment in a high-stakes operational environment.
Hire, develop, and retain talent as the function scales.
Build a culture of curiosity, precision, urgency, and sound risk judgment.