About This Role
This role is part of a financial crime operations team in Lisbon that supports a major cryptocurrency exchange. The team investigates alerts from customer and transaction monitoring systems, traces funds on-chain and off-chain, and determines if activity is explained, needs escalation, or warrants a suspicious activity report. The team is hiring for several levels, from hands-on investigators to quality reviewers and people leaders, and suits candidates with experience in AML transaction monitoring and digital-asset financial crime.
Responsibilities
- Run end-to-end investigations of crypto and fiat activity
- Trace funds across wallets and services
- Write clear, defensible case and SAR narratives
- Independently review investigator work to confirm that tracing, risk analysis, evidence, and final decisions are accurate and well supported
- Document defects and drive remediation
- Lead a team of investigators
- Manage daily case inventory
- Act as the first escalation point on complex cases
- Coach the team on case strategy and narrative quality
- Oversee multiple team leads and overall delivery
- Own production, quality, and service-level performance
- Act as a senior contact for compliance leadership and client stakeholders
- Investigate crypto deposits, withdrawals, transfers, fiat funding, and account behavior using KYC/CDD/EDD data, transaction histories, internal records, and open-source intelligence
- Trace funds on-chain with tools such as Chainalysis, TRM Labs, or Elliptic, and match that activity to off-chain customer records
- Spot digital-asset typologies, including layering, structuring, chain hopping, mixers, high-risk exchanges, scams and fraud, ransomware, darknet markets, mule activity, and sanctions exposure
- Check customer activity against expected behavior, source of funds and wealth, geography, and transaction history
- Decide outcomes: close, escalate, refer to sanctions or fraud, or recommend a SAR
- Produce concise, fact-based, audit-ready case documentation
- Raise emerging typologies, linked accounts, and control gaps with compliance leadership
- Work in a production environment with defined quality, productivity, and regulatory deadlines
Requirements
- Experience in AML transaction monitoring or suspicious activity investigations at a bank, fintech, payment company, or crypto exchange:
- Investigator: 2+ years
- QC Analyst: 3+ years
- Team Lead: 5+ years, including 2+ years leading or reviewing analysts
- Operations Manager: 7+ years, including 3+ years managing leads or supervisors
- Practical knowledge of crypto transaction flows: wallets, addresses, transaction hashes, centralized and decentralized exchanges, stablecoins, bridges, and smart contracts
