Financial Crimes Intelligence Manager

Lead is a banking infrastructure platform trusted by the most innovative companies to power complex financial products. We enable fintechs to offer compliant, programmable services like payments, lending, and digital assets at scale. Banking has moved beyond traditional institutions and is now embedded directly into everyday experiences, meaning companies need modern infrastructure that is safe, secure, and operationally sound.

Today, Lead is one of the only API-first, developer-focused partner banks with the financial, regulatory, and legal expertise required to help fintechs succeed. We operate offices in San Francisco, Sunnyvale, and New York City, and an FDIC-insured bank in Kansas City.

The Financial Crimes team safeguards Lead, its partners, and the broader financial system from illicit activity. They own Lead’s BSA/AML, sanctions, and fraud programs, collaborate with the Legal, Risk, and Compliance teams to detect threats and strengthen controls, and interface with regulators. Ensuring that all parties involved meet the highest standards of financial integrity is foundational to the company’s success. Their essential work is what enables Lead to say "yes" to the most innovative fintech partners. This is a collaborative, growth-mindset, and deadline-driven environment that requires the confidence to navigate constantly evolving challenges with autonomy and analytical precision.

The Financial Crimes Intelligence Manager reports to the Senior Financial Crimes Manager / Head of FIU and leads the FIU’s investigators and analysts. The role manages investigative workload and quality, supports complex investigations and SAR decisioning, and develops intelligence to identify and mitigate financial-crime risk.

The Manager assists the Head of FIU with operating priorities, reporting, examinations, audits, risk assessments, and remediation. The role partners across Financial Crimes and the Bank to strengthen monitoring, controls, investigations, and reporting. The Director of Financial Crimes / BSA Officer retains overall regulatory accountability for the program.

• Lead the FIU team by assigning work, managing queues, reviewing casework, monitoring quality, and providing training to investigators and analysts.

• Oversee complex alerts, investigations, unusual-activity referrals, and relationship decisions; escalate material issues as needed.

• Ensures the FIU team collects, analyzes, and identifies meaningful investigation trends in addition to emerging threats and new typologies.

• Support investigative and SAR decisions using permitted sources and clearly distinguishing facts, analysis, and information gaps.

• Translate intelligence findings into recommendations for monitoring, controls, procedures, training, and partner or product risk decisions.

• Maintain effective governance, confidentiality, documentation, and regulatory knowledge while supporting the Head of FIU and cross-functional partners.

• Provide day to day oversight of a diverse investigations team.

• Partner with internal stakeholders to optimize automated transaction monitoring systems.

• Design, test, and deploy new scenario rules and detection models to capture emerging financial crime trends (e.g., crypto-mixers, trade-based money laundering, shell company networks).

• Leverage internal tools to analyze transactional data, and reduce false-positive rates,

• Perform all other duties as assigned.

• 5 - 7 years of experience in financial-crimes intelligence, AML investigations, fraud, sanctions, law enforcement, regulatory compliance, or a related financial-services field.

• 2 - 5 years of management experience leading, mentoring, and overseeing investigators or analysts.

• Experience with complex investigations, intelligence products, typology development, network analysis, or financial-crimes risk assessments.

• Experience managing high-volume workloads, queues, case reviews, competing priorities, and operational or investigative escalations.

• Preferred experience with BaaS, payments, fintech, digital assets, correspondent banking, or other complex financial products.

• Preferred experience with OSINT, adverse-media research, link analysis, blockchain analytics, investigative tools, or a relevant certification such as CAMS, CFE, CFCS, or CAFP.

• Strong analytical judgment, including the ability to evaluate incomplete information and distinguish fact, inference, and unresolved gaps.

• Clear communication, sound confidentiality judgment, collaboration, adaptability, and the ability to work independently in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.