About us
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This is a senior leadership role with broad responsibility across the Group, partnering closely with executive leadership, Legal, Product, Engineering, Operations, Finance and other teams to ensure we continue to grow and innovate within a strong and scalable compliance framework. The role will provide Group-wide oversight of compliance and regulatory risk, while recognising that the nature and intensity of regulatory obligations will differ across our businesses, products and entities.
You’ll oversee compliance across our products, entities and markets, including regulated parts of the business, while acting as a trusted advisor to senior leadership and relevant Boards. You’ll be expected to combine deep regulatory expertise with strong commercial judgement, helping the business navigate complex questions, launch new products, enter new markets and manage regulatory risk without losing sight of how the business operates
This is a role for someone comfortable moving between strategy and execution, from advising leadership on emerging regulatory issues, and assessing where regulatory boundaries apply across new and existing activities, to working directly with teams to solve complex compliance challenges. Given the role’s responsibilities across our regulated businesses, you’ll also be expected to hold relevant individual regulatory roles and approvals.
How you can make an impact:
- Lead the Group compliance strategy and framework across our products, entities and jurisdictions, covering both regulated and unregulated activities and ensuring requirements and controls are appropriately calibrated to the nature and regulatory status of each business
- Oversee the compliance frameworks of the Group’s regulated entities, ensuring they continue to meet applicable regulatory obligations, while providing proportionate compliance oversight and advice across the wider unregulated business
- Act as a trusted advisor to executive leadership and relevant Boards on compliance, regulatory risk and emerging issues, providing clear, pragmatic and commercially minded guidance
- Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, Legal and Commercial teams to embed regulatory requirements into new products, features, partnerships and customer journeys from an early stage
- Lead the assessment of regulatory implications associated with new products, markets, business models and strategic initiatives, developing practical approaches that enable the business to execute responsibly
- Own and continuously develop the Group compliance programme, including policies, risk assessments, monitoring and testing, regulatory reporting, governance, remediation and management information
- Oversee financial crime compliance across the Group, ensuring effective and proportionate frameworks for AML/CTF, sanctions, customer risk, transaction monitoring, suspicious activity reporting and other relevant financial crime risks
- Maintain effective regulatory relationships and lead engagement with regulators, including regulatory applications, examinations, information requests and remediation programmes where required
- Monitor regulatory developments across our key markets and translate changes into clear implications, priorities and actions for the business
- Provide clear and effective compliance reporting to executive leadership and relevant Boards, ensuring key risks, trends and areas requiring attention are understood
Let's connect if:
- You have 12+ years of experience in Compliance, Financial Crime, Regulatory or related functions within regulated financial services, fintech, payments or crypto, including significant experience in senior leadership roles
- You have operated at Group or enterprise level with responsibility spanning multiple products, business lines, regulated entities or jurisdictions
- You have advised executive leadership and Boards on complex compliance and regulatory matters and are comfortable challenging senior stakeholders when required
- You have significant experience engaging directly with financial services regulators and understand how to manage regulatory relationships effectively
- You have strong knowledge of regulatory frameworks relevant to payments, cryptoassets and digital financial services, ideally across the UK, EU and US
- You have experience supporting product development and understand how to translate regulatory requirements into practical solutions without unnecessarily slowing down innovation
- You’re able to operate strategically while remaining close enough to the detail to work through complex or high-risk matters when required
- You have experience building and scaling compliance programmes, teams and infrastructure within a growing international organisation
- You’re comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment where regulation and business priorities evolve quickly and where there may not always be an established playbook
- You are able to satisfy applicable FCA fitness and propriety requirements and are comfortable holding individual regulatory responsibilities in respect of our UK regulated businesses, including registration as an EMD and MLR Individual.
Skills Required
- 12+ years of experience in compliance, financial crime, regulatory, or related functions within regulated financial services, fintech, payments, or crypto
- Significant experience in senior leadership roles
- Enterprise or Group-level responsibility spanning multiple products, business lines, regulated entities, or jurisdictions
- Experience advising executive leadership and Boards on complex compliance and regulatory matters
- Significant direct engagement experience with financial services regulators
- Strong knowledge of regulatory frameworks relevant to payments, cryptoassets, and digital financial services
- Knowledge of UK, EU, and US regulatory frameworks
- Experience supporting product development and translating regulatory requirements into practical solutions
- Experience building and scaling compliance programs, teams, and infrastructure in an international organization
- Ability to satisfy applicable FCA fitness and propriety requirements
- Willingness and ability to hold individual regulatory responsibilities for UK regulated businesses, including registration as an EMD and MLR Individual
What We Do
Aave Labs is the original author and key contributor of the Aave Protocol and a software technology company founded by Stani Kulechov. The team builds blockchain-based products that power decentralized finance, including the Aave Protocol, the Aave-native stablecoin GHO, and Horizon, an institutional platform for borrowing against tokenized real-world assets. Aave is DeFi’s largest and most trusted lending protocol, where users can earn, borrow, save, and swap alongside millions of others worldwide.







