Director, Financial Crimes Technology

Pathward, N.A.

4d • $86,000 - $145,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of BSA Technology is the BSA functional lead responsible for ensuring the Bank's customer risk rating models are accurately implemented, operating as intended, producing reliable and explainable outputs, and meeting all applicable regulatory and internal governance expectations. This role resides within the Financial Crimes Program and Technology Assurance team and serves as the bridge between model design — owned by stakeholder groups within the broader BSA Department — and technology delivery, owned by a technology/product counterpart responsible for software implementation and vendor execution.
The Director partners with BSA model design stakeholders to understand design intent and translate it into detailed requirements, then works with the technology/product counterpart to ensure those requirements are built and delivered as specified. This role provides strategic oversight of model implementation, change management, and ongoing performance monitoring of model outputs and data quality from a compliance lens.
This is not a model design role. Decisions regarding risk factor selection, scoring methodology, tier structures, and calibration thresholds reside with the appropriate BSA stakeholder groups. This is also not a software delivery role. System build, vendor management, and technical deployment are owned by the technology/product counterpart. This role's mandate is to define what the technology must do from a BSA perspective, validate that it does so correctly, and monitor ongoing performance to ensure continued accuracy and regulatory alignment.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree required
• 10+ years of experience in BSA/AML compliance, financial crimes technology, or risk management systems, with at least 5 years in a leadership capacity
• Strong working knowledge of BSA/AML platforms such as Actimize, SAS, Oracle Financial Crimes, or similar systems, with experience defining requirements and validating outputs
• Demonstrated experience developing functional requirements, leading user acceptance testing, and managing output validation processes in a regulated environment
• Solid understanding of BSA/AML regulatory requirements including CDD/EDD, beneficial ownership, and risk-based program expectations
• Familiarity with model risk management frameworks from a functional validation perspective
• Experience with data quality management, monitoring frameworks, and reporting in a financial services environment
• Experience with data analytics tools and techniques used in compliance monitoring and output analysis
• Proven ability to communicate compliance and functional requirements clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Analytical rigor with a focus on output accuracy and regulatory defensibility
• Strong attention to detail, particularly in testing, validation, and data quality assessment
• Collaborative leadership style with the ability to work effectively across organizational boundaries, particularly with BSA model design stakeholders and technology/product counterparts
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Adaptability in a dynamic regulatory and technology landscape, with comfort navigating the intersection of compliance requirements and technology delivery

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree (JD, MBA, or Masters in a related field) preferred.
• CAMS, CFCS, or similar certification preferred

Responsibilities

• Partner with BSA model design stakeholders to translate design decisions into detailed functional requirements, business rules, acceptance criteria, and expected outputs for the technology/product counterpart
• Serve as the BSA subject matter authority in requirements discussions, ensuring compliance and regulatory considerations are fully reflected in system specifications
• Evaluate proposed technical approaches from the technology/product counterpart to confirm alignment with BSA program objectives and model design intent
• Maintain a prioritized list of enhancement requests, defect resolutions, and regulatory-driven changes
• Own user acceptance testing for all customer risk rating system changes, new deployments, and model recalibrations, including development of test plans, test cases, and sign-off protocols
• Validate that risk ratings are accurately calculated, properly assigned, and consistently applied across customer segments and business lines
• Monitor model outputs on an ongoing basis to identify anomalies, unexpected distributions, or data quality issues and surface findings to BSA model design stakeholders
• Optimize and tune system parameters to ensure the platform produces desired outputs
• Investigate and resolve discrepancies between expected and actual outputs, coordinating with model design stakeholders on design questions and the technology/product counterpart on system issues
• Maintain comprehensive functional documentation including business rules, data mappings, validation results, monitoring activities, and remediation actions for regulatory examination / audit readiness
• Coordinate with the technology/product counterpart on timelines, release schedules, and issue resolution to ensure BSA priorities are appropriately reflected
• Partner with BSA Department to ensure risk ratings drive appropriate workflows and reflect relevant business context
• Develop and maintain a functional roadmap for BSA risk rating capabilities aligned with the Bank's growth strategy and regulatory environment
• Prepare materials for management reporting on model output performance, data quality trends, and enhancement initiatives
• Build, mentor, and lead a team of BSA technology analysts and functional specialists with clear performance expectations and development paths
• Support new product and market expansion initiatives by assessing functional requirements for customer risk rating in new business lines

Benefits

• Pathward offers a comprehensive benefits package for eligible employees, including health insurance, 401(k) retirement benefits, life insurance, disability benefits, paid time off, and more.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director