Director, Financial Crimes Compliance

Director, Financial Crimes Compliance at PayPal

PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years, creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure. We empower consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. Operating a global, two-sided network at scale, we connect hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers, facilitating payments whether online or in person. PayPal provides proprietary payment solutions and offers flexibility to use accounts for purchases, receiving payments, transferring, and withdrawing funds.

Consumers can exchange funds more safely using various sources like bank accounts, PayPal/Venmo balances, credit products, cards, cryptocurrencies, or gift cards. Our products also simplify transfers between friends and family. For merchants, we offer an end-to-end payments solution with authorization, settlement, instant fund access, and risk management. We enable cross-border shopping and global merchant reach by reducing complexity and friction. Our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness guide how we conduct business, ensuring we work as one global team with customers at the center.

Job Description Summary

PayPal is seeking an experienced Director, Financial Crimes Compliance to lead the development and execution of our financial crime risk management strategy for PayPal World, our groundbreaking initiative enabling interoperability between digital wallet providers globally. This role will serve as the central program owner, coordinating and aligning matrixed compliance teams across the Global Financial Crimes Compliance Program (GFCCP) to ensure cohesive, effective risk management for this innovative product.

Essential Responsibilities

• Establish overall business or technical strategy for risk management with significant impact on operations.
• Influence executive-level decision-making through strategic risk assessments and recommendations.
• Partner with stakeholders to implement strategies that reduce or transfer identified risks.
• Monitor and analyze risk exposure to ensure alignment with organizational objectives.
• Lead initiatives that contribute to long-term sustainability and resilience in the face of uncertainty.

Expected Qualifications

• 10+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.

What You'll Do

As Director, Financial Crimes Compliance for PayPal World, you will own the end-to-end financial crimes program strategy, serving as the orchestrator and integrator of compliance activities across multiple GFCCP functional teams. You will provide program-level oversight, direction, and accountability for all PayPal World financial crime activities, even as team members maintain reporting lines to their respective functional areas (such as Sanctions, AML/BSA, CIP, Partner Due Diligence, Brand Risk Management, and Disputes).

Your responsibilities include establishing the overall compliance vision and strategy for PayPal World, ensuring alignment across all financial crimes disciplines, coordinating matrixed resources across GFCCP functional teams, creating integrated program governance including cross-functional escalation protocols, risk assessment frameworks, and decision-making processes, and partnering with GFCCP functional leaders to prioritize PayPal World requirements and ensure adequate resourcing.

You will develop comprehensive program requirements for partner wallet provider onboarding, monitoring, and off-boarding, translating these into actionable deliverables for functional teams. You'll serve as the single point of accountability for PayPal World financial crimes compliance, synthesizing inputs from multiple teams into cohesive program outcomes, and build strategic partnerships with external wallet providers to align on compliance standards, coordinating information sharing and escalation protocols across organizations.

Additionally, you will lead cross-functional working groups to address complex compliance challenges, represent PayPal World in regulatory discussions and examinations, consolidating perspectives from across GFCCP, partner closely with Product, Engineering, Legal, and regional compliance teams to embed controls throughout the product lifecycle, develop program-level metrics and reporting, and drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance integration across functional teams.

What You'll Bring

The ideal candidate brings 10+ years of experience in financial crimes compliance within payments, fintech, or financial services, with demonstrated success leading complex, cross-functional compliance programs in matrix organizations. You possess a proven ability to influence without direct authority, building alignment across diverse stakeholders and functional teams, and deep knowledge of core financial crime disciplines including Sanctions, AML/BSA, CIP, Partner Due Diligence, Brand Risk Management, and dispute and chargeback management.

You should have experience in payment network programs (card networks, money transfer networks, or multi-party payment ecosystems), strong program management skills with the ability to orchestrate multiple workstreams, and experience building compliance frameworks from the ground up for new products or business lines in complex organizational structures.

Your background should include partnering with product and technology teams to embed compliance controls into system design, managing relationships with external partners, regulators, and law enforcement, navigating ambiguity and building structure in emerging business areas, and a strong understanding of cross-border payments compliance and international regulatory frameworks, particularly in Asian markets.

You demonstrate exceptional leadership and collaboration skills, with ability to align matrixed teams toward common goals, excellent strategic thinking with ability to translate high-level vision into actionable functional requirements, strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a systems-thinking mindset, ability to see connections across disciplines, and outstanding communication skills with ability to influence senior stakeholders and synthesize complex information for executive audiences.

Key skills/competency

• Financial Crime Risk Management
• Anti-Money Laundering (AML)
• Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)
• Sanctions Compliance
• Customer Identification Program (CIP)
• Partner Due Diligence
• Program Management
• Global Compliance Standards
• Payments Industry Knowledge
• Cross-border Payments