Global Head of Compliance

👋 About Us

NALA is building Payments for the Next Billion. Faster, smarter, and fairer transfers for everyone. Since 2022, we've grown our business 120x, grown the team from 9 to 150+, raised $50M+ from top-tier investors, and were named to the Forbes Fintech 50 in 2025.

We operate two core products:

• NALA, our consumer app making cross-border payments cheaper, faster and more reliable for the global diaspora. Allowing users to send money from the UK, US and EU to Africa and Asia.
• Rafiki, our B2B payments infrastructure, is powering global payments.

Our team includes alumni from Wise, Stripe, Monzo, Revolut, and CashApp — operators who’ve scaled world-class products. We act with urgency, think deeply, and put our customers first always.

At NALA, this isn’t just a job. It’s ownership, impact, and the chance to change global payments forever.

Join us in building [Payments for the Next Billion](https://www.nala.com/blog/nalas-updated-mission#:~:text=When I started building NALA,are more urgent than ever.).

🙌 Your Mission

Your mission is to build and lead a world-class compliance and risk function that enables NALA to scale safely across consumer and B2B payments. You will protect our customers, licences and reputation while helping the business move at the pace that being NALA requires. Your regulatory leadership is focused on our Western licensed markets - the UK, EU, US, Canada and Australia - with our Africa and emerging-markets footprint folded into your remit over time. This spans both our consumer app and the infrastructure powering some of the world's largest payments companies.

Compliance at NALA is not a blocker function. It is the function that decides which corridors we open, which products we launch, which acquisitions we close, and which regulators we earn the trust of. Done well, it is our most defensible competitive advantage. This role is both the guardian of NALA's licence to operate and a growth partner that helps us find compliant ways to put innovative financial products in front of customers in frontier markets.

🎯 Your Responsibilities in this Role

• Lead and enable NALA's global group of MLROs and BSA/AML officers across the UK, EU (Belgium), US and Canada. Our Africa compliance lead joins this group over time - reporting primarily to Benji to begin with, on a dotted line to you.
• Own NALA's global compliance strategy across AML/CTF, sanctions, consumer protection, licensing, regulatory reporting, financial crime and fraud controls, covering both the NALA consumer business and the Rafiki B2B infrastructure platform.
• Act as both the guardian of NALA's licence to operate - maintaining the compliance infrastructure and standards regulators expect, staying clear of any criminal lines, and proactively helping regulators - and a growth- and customer-focused partner who helps the business find compliant ways to deliver innovative financial products to customers in frontier markets.
• Act as NALA's most senior regulatory leader, building trusted relationships with regulators (FCA, NBB, FinCEN and US state regulators, and others), banking partners, and acquirer counterparties.
• Continuously acquire and maintain the licences NALA needs to operate. This includes scaling NALA's US footprint from current licensed states to 30+, and building the US-resident compliance presence required for the highest-volume states (CA, NY, TX, NJ, MA, WA).
• Own risk management across the organisation. Run NALA's enterprise risk framework and steer the Risk Committee, so that risk is identified, owned and managed beyond compliance alone.
• Lead integration and M&A-related compliance activity on a rolling basis, including the in-flight regulated acquisitions in the UK and EU - owning change-of-control submissions, integration planning, and the operationalisation of acquired licence permissions.
• Build, hire and lead a high-performing compliance team.
• Lead compliance input into every new product, corridor, partnership and acquisition, including stablecoin settlement infrastructure, local currency wallets, B2B collections, and emerging markets corridors, so risk is identified early and managed effectively.
• Own the regulatory examinations and audit cycle across NALA's licensed entities, including upcoming audits in Canada, the UK, and the EU. Manage remediation of any findings to a defensible standard.
• Build the Group risk and compliance framework, including an enterprise risk management system, board-level Risk & Compliance Committee, and the data architecture for direct regulatory reporting that's becoming standard in the EU, Canada and beyond.
• Create clear, decision-useful reporting for the CEO, ExCo and Board on regulatory and enterprise risk, control performance, and key compliance priorities.
• Be the executive who decides when to enable, when to challenge, and when to stop, and who can defend each of those decisions to a regulator, a board, and an acquirer.

🔥 Must-have requirements

• Led the compliance function at a regulated fintech, payments, EMI, MSB, remittance or banking business. Not pure corporate or banking-only experience.
• Deep, hands-on experience with AML/CTF, sanctions, financial crime, transaction monitoring, regulator engagement, and licence obligations.
• A hands-on leader who can problem-solve and do the work themselves when they need to. Without that capability, we won't get the best out of the team you build.
• Emerging-market exposure. You understand the realities of how business and regulators actually operate in frontier and emerging markets. This can be general EM business experience - it does not have to be deep EM compliance experience.
• Exposure to stablecoin, digital asset or crypto regulatory frameworks, particularly in cross-border settlement contexts.
• Experience in cross-border payments, remittance, card issuing/acquiring, banking infrastructure or B2B payments.
• Held an SMF, MLRO, BSA/AML Officer, or equivalent regulated role, or are eligible to be approved for one.
• Built compliance frameworks from the ground up. You have moved a programme from gaps and backlogs to scaled, defensible, audit-ready. You're a builder, not a maintainer.
• Multi-jurisdictional experience. You've operated across at least two of: UK, EU, US, and emerging markets, and can tell the difference between what a regulator says, what they mean, and what they will accept.
• Clear judgement on when to enable, when to challenge, and when to stop activity. You can defend your decisions in writing, in person, and under pressure.
• Track record advising CEOs, Boards or ExCo on material regulatory and compliance risk, and being the calm, trusted voice in the room when something has just hit the fan.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with regulators, banking partners, acquirer counterparties and senior internal stakeholders.
• Comfort with a fast-moving, ambiguous, builder-stage environment. This is not a 20-person Big-4-style compliance shop, and won't become one any time soon.

💪 Nice to have requirements

• Operated across UK and US regulatory regimes simultaneously (FCA + FinCEN + state regulators).
• Compliance leadership through an M&A transaction: change of control filings, regulatory integration, condition remediation.
• Working understanding of African or other emerging-market regulatory regimes (CBK, BoT, BoG, CBN, BCEAO, BEAC, etc.), or the willingness to learn them quickly.
• Built compliance teams through periods of high growth, including hiring in-market MLROs and country compliance officers.

⭐️ Benefits

UK - In Office

• Private Medical Insurance: Full medical cover through a leading UK provider, because your health comes first.
• 27 Days Off Plus UK Bank Holidays: Take the time to decompress. Working at a startup is hard!
• Birthday Leave: Celebrate your special day with a bonus day off to take in that month.
• Enhanced Parental Leave: We offer 16 weeks of full pay for the primary caregiver and 4 weeks of full pay for the secondary caregiver (after a 6-month probationary period).
• Enhanced Pension: Salary sacrifice pension scheme via Penfold, giving you flexibility and control over how you save for your future.
• Life Insurance: 3x salary cover, giving you and your family peace of mind.
• Global Workspace: Get access to WeWork locations worldwide.
• Learning Budget: Fuel your growth with $1000 annually for learning and development.
• Sarabi: Themed snacks and Friday lunch focused on building great working relationships with the team.
• Monthly Socials: Join fun social events every month for great times.
• Free Coffee: Enjoy barista-style coffee at your fingertips.