Financial Crime Quality Assurance Manager

About the role

You will own the end-to-end quality assurance framework for Customer Due Diligence, Ongoing Due Diligence, and Enhanced Due Diligence, ensuring robust and consistent controls that protect both Pleo and our customers while supporting AML/CTF compliance across the customer lifecycle. This is a leadership position that sits at the intersection of operational control, people management, and AI-driven transformation, where you will evolve how we review, assess, and improve financial crime decisions in line with our Risk Appetite and regulatory expectations. You will build and lead a high-performing team of Quality Assurance Specialists, coaching them to maintain high standards in case review and control assurance while fostering clarity and accountability. Working closely with KYC Knowledge, Operational teams, Product, Financial Crime, and Data, you will act as a key first-line control assurance function alongside second-line Fincrime Compliance and the MLRO to ensure effective oversight and governance. A core part of the role will be to turn QA insights into actionable improvements across operations, training, and tooling, embedding continuous learning and sustainability into our processes. You will also introduce and scale AI-enabled capabilities such as automated sampling, anomaly detection, and decision consistency analysis, ensuring that all AI outputs remain explainable, auditable, and governed with appropriate human oversight. Ultimately, you will safeguard the integrity of financial crime decision-making, ensuring QA outputs are defensible, consistent, and aligned with regulatory expectations, supporting audits, regulatory engagement, and control assurance reviews.

Key facts

What you'll do

Own the Financial Crime QA Framework and define, maintain, and evolve the end-to-end controls across CDD, ODD, and EDD to protect Pleo and our customers.

Lead structured case review and control assurance activities, ensuring consistency, quality, and compliance with clear audit trails and defensible decisioning standards.

Build and lead a high-performing team of Quality Assurance Specialists, providing clarity, accountability, and strong coaching in how quality reviews are performed.

Strengthen operational controls by identifying process weaknesses, escalating risks, and reinforcing decision-making standards, including highlighting suspicious activity trends or systemic control issues.

Drive AI-enabled QA transformation by introducing and scaling capabilities such as automated sampling, anomaly detection, and decision consistency analysis.

Turn QA insights into continuous improvement by using findings and AI-generated insights to drive sustainable changes in operations, training, and tooling.

Ensure decisions are consistent, defensible, and auditable by aligning QA outputs with regulatory expectations and supporting internal audit readiness and control assurance reviews.

Own QA performance metrics and governance, monitoring quality, timeliness, and adherence to standards while collaborating with Compliance, Data, and Product teams.

Champion a customer-centric approach within QA, ensuring that financial crime controls protect customers while maintaining a smooth and fair experience.

Act as a subject matter expert in financial crime QA, contributing to methodologies, documentation, and best practices that can scale across the business.

Collaborate with second-line functions to ensure effective oversight, escalation, and governance of financial crime risks across the customer lifecycle.

Support the delivery of a robust AML/CTF control framework by embedding QA into the broader risk management and compliance ecosystem.

Identify opportunities for automation and process optimization to improve efficiency, consistency, and scalability of QA activities.

Communicate QA outcomes and recommendations clearly to stakeholders, enabling informed decision-making and alignment on risk and control priorities.

Requirements

You must have the right to work in Spain.

You must be fluent in English.

You must have experience working in a Financial Crime, Compliance, or Risk environment.

You must have a proven track record of delivering quality assurance at scale.

You must have experience designing, implementing, and evolving QA frameworks and controls.

You must have experience leading and developing teams, including coaching, performance management, and clear accountability.

You must have experience working with or delivering AML/CTF controls and understand regulatory expectations.

You must have strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to turn complex information into clear, actionable insights.

Nice to have

Experience with AI-driven QA, automation, or data analytics in a financial crime or compliance context.

Experience working in a fast-paced, high-growth fintech environment.

Experience collaborating with RegTech solutions and understanding of API-driven platforms.

Practical notes

Office-based role in Madrid.

Standard European working hours apply.

No visa required for EU/EEA candidates.

Role open to all nationalities, subject to eligibility to work in Spain.