Engineering Lead - AML

Wise is a global technology company, building the best way to move and manage the world’s money.
Min fees. Max ease. Full speed.

Whether people and businesses are sending money to another country, spending abroad, or making and receiving international payments, Wise is on a mission to make their lives easier and save them money.

As part of our team, you’ll be helping us create an entirely new network for the world’s money — for everyone, everywhere.

Instant, low cost, and convenient are three guiding principles for Wise products. Those same benefits can also attract people looking to misuse financial services for money laundering and other financial crimes. The IMF estimates that up to 5% of world GDP is laundered each year — and Wise is investing in building systems that help detect and stop this activity, while keeping things smooth for legitimate customers.

We’re looking for an Engineering Lead to join our AML Squad and shape how Wise detects money laundering and terrorist financing risk across our products and regions. You’ll lead an existing, cross-functional team responsible for risk detection and alert creation, combining engineering excellence with product thinking and people leadership.

About the Role

The AML Risk team, within the AML Squad at Wise, builds systems and controls that detect money laundering and terrorist financing risks. We use data and our knowledge of criminal behaviour to create effective detection controls and useful alerts. Criminal activity changes quickly — we improve our controls as new risks appear, aiming to detect more real risk, reduce false alerts, and avoid unnecessary friction for legitimate customers.

As the Engineering Lead, you will:

• Lead a team that owns AML risk detection and alert creation
• Set technical direction and drive the team’s roadmap and delivery
• Build reliable and scalable systems that support and evolve Wise’s AML controls
• Partner closely with product managers, data scientists, analysts, and AML subject matter experts to turn risk knowledge into effective controls
• Improve how quickly and accurately Wise detects risk, while balancing effectiveness, false positives, and customer experience

This is a role for someone who can combine hands-on technical leadership, people leadership, and strong ownership of a problem space.

Technical Responsibilities

• Own the team’s technical roadmap, ensuring AML detection systems are reliable, effective, scalable, and maintainable.
• Lead the development of new detection capabilities to identify emerging patterns of criminal activity.
• Act as a technical expert for AML risk detection and alert creation, guiding the squad’s engineering approach and standards.
• Design systems and tooling that make it easier to create, test, iterate, and measure the impact of AML controls.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership through architectural guidance, code reviews, and engineering best practices.
• Maintain high standards for code quality, consistency, observability, and operational reliability.
• Balance immediate operational needs with long-term architectural investments so the platform evolves without compromising stability.

Leadership Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and mentor engineers across experience levels, building a culture of technical ownership, continuous improvement, and resilience.
• Partner with product managers, data scientists, analysts, and AML experts to shape priorities and convert problem understanding into deliverable outcomes.
• Help the team navigate complex priorities and trade-offs (e.g., detection effectiveness vs. false alerts vs. delivery speed vs. long-term quality).
• Collaborate with other Engineering Leads and Staff Engineers on wider technical direction and cross-squad initiatives.
• Represent the team across Wise, aligning stakeholders and leading projects from initial idea through to release and iteration.
• Create clarity when priorities are ambiguous, enabling the team to make decisions and stay focused.

Technical Excellence

• Strong software engineering background, with experience designing and building complex systems at scale.
• Comfortable working in a complex domain and guiding a team through difficult technical challenges.
• Experience with distributed systems; able to explain trade-offs and make clear architectural decisions.
• Able to balance short-term delivery with long-term system quality and operational reliability.
• Comfortable working with data to understand problems, evaluate outcomes, and guide decisions.
• Experience with machine learning and/or large language models in production is preferred but not required.

Product Mindset

• Strong ownership mindset: you think beyond implementation to customer impact, risk outcomes, and business needs.
• Comfortable working autonomously and driving initiatives from concept to delivery.
• Experience working closely with product and stakeholders to define requirements and prioritise high-impact work.
• Curious and willing to dig deep into problem spaces, customer behaviour, and evolving criminal tactics.

Leadership Skills

• Empathetic leader with a track record of mentoring and coaching engineers at all levels.
• Lead by example and raise the bar on engineering quality and maintainability.
• Excellent communicator who can explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Able to create alignment and momentum in uncertain and fast-changing environments.

Ideal Background

• Experience in payments, fintech, financial crime, or another complex/high-stakes domain.
• Experience working with global and distributed teams.
• Experience building and scaling systems that support multiple products and regions.
• Strong foundation in distributed systems and cloud architecture.
• AML / financial crime experience is preferred but not required.

Why join us

Your work will directly improve how Wise detects money laundering and terrorist financing risk — helping teams find suspicious activity earlier, act with better information, and reduce false alerts and unnecessary customer friction.

You’ll join a highly skilled and collaborative cross-functional team, solving complex problems at the intersection of engineering, data, and risk. You’ll help Wise grow safely across products and regions, while shaping the future of AML detection capabilities as the team and its scope expand.

Interested? Find out more:

• Benefits at Wise and our offices

For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders — without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive.

We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences.

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