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About The Role We're looking for a Financial Crime Quality Assurance Manager to join our Voice of the Customer team at Pleo. In this role, you'll lead our quality assurance function across Customer Due Diligence (CDD), Ongoing Due Diligence (ODD), and Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), ensuring we maintain strong, consistent controls that protect both Pleo and our customers, and support the delivery of a robust AML/CTF control framework across the customer lifecycle. This is a leadership role that sits at the intersection of operational control, people management, and AI-driven transformation.

You'll be responsible for owning and evolving the QA framework that underpins how we review, assess, and improve financial crime decisions, ensuring alignment with Pleo’s Financial Crime Risk Appetite and regulatory expectations. At the same time, you'll play a key role in transforming QA into a more intelligent, AI-enabled function — using automation and data-driven insights to improve consistency, reduce risk, and continuously enhance quality at scale. While the initial focus will be on CDD, ODD, and EDD, the scope of the role could also expand into broader financial crime QA and control areas over time.

You'll report to the Voice of the Customer team Manager and work closely with leaders across KYC Knowledge, Operational teams, Product, Financial Crime teams, 2 line of defense, and Data. You'll lead a team of Quality Assurance Specialists who are responsible for reviewing financial crime cases and ensuring decisions meet internal standards, regulatory expectations, and customer protection requirements. This role operates as a key first-line control assurance function, working closely with second-line Fincrime Compliance and the MLRO to ensure effective oversight, escalation, and governance of financial crime risks.

Own the Financial Crime QA Framework – Define, maintain, and evolve the end-to-end QA framework across CDD, ODD, and EDD, ensuring robust controls that protect Pleo and our customers, and support AML/CTF compliance obligations in line with regulatory expectations.

Lead Case

Review and Control Assurance Activities – Oversee the structured review of financial crime cases, ensuring consistency, quality, and compliance across all due diligence processes, with clear audit trails and defensible decisioning standards. Build and Lead a High-performing Team – Manage, coach, and develop a team of QA specialists, creating clarity, accountability, and high standards in how quality reviews are performed.

Strengthen Operational





Controls – Ensure QA acts as a key control function by identifying process weaknesses, escalating risks, and reinforcing robust decision‑making standards, including escalation of potential suspicious activity trends or systemic control issues. Drive AI-Enabled QA Transformation – Introduce and scale AI-driven capabilities to improve how quality is assessed, including automated sampling, anomaly detection, decision consistency analysis, and intelligent quality insights, ensuring all AI outputs are explainable, auditable, and governed with appropriate oversight and human accountability. Turn QA Insights into Continuous Improvement – Use QA findings and AI-generated insights to identify root causes of issues and drive meaningful, sustainable improvements across operations, training, and tooling.

Ensure

Consistent and Defensible Decisions – Safeguard the integrity of financial crime decision-making by ensuring QA outputs are consistent, auditable, and aligned with regulatory expectations, supporting regulatory engagement, internal audit readiness, and ongoing control assurance reviews. Own QA Management Information (MI) and Governance Reporting – Develop and maintain QA MI, including key metrics, trend analysis, and risk indicators, and produce monthly governance reports for Financial Crime forums, supporting MLRO-level oversight and risk-based decision‑making.

Partner

Across the Business – Work closely with Product, Engineering, Data, and Financial Crime Operations to improve systems, embed controls, and ensure QA insights directly shape how we operate.

Financial Crime

Experience – Strong background in CDD, ODD, and EDD, with a solid understanding of financial crime risk and regulatory expectations.

Quality

Assurance or Control Function Experience – Proven experience leading QA, audit, compliance monitoring, or control functions in a regulated environment.

People Leadership

Skills – Experience managing and developing teams, with a focus on performance, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Strong Control

Mindset – Deep understanding of operational risk, control frameworks, and the importance of consistent, defensible decision‑making. AI and Data Curiosity – A strong interest in how AI and data can improve control functions, with the ability to translate ideas into practical operational improvements.

Analytical

Thinking – Ability to interpret QA data, identify trends, and translate findings into actionable improvements.

Stakeholder





Management – Strong communication skills and ability to influence across operational, technical, and compliance stakeholders.

Experience implementing or scaling QA or control frameworks in fast-growing organisations. FinTech or regulated financial services experience. You are excited by the opportunity to modernise QA through AI and automation.

You want to improve not just processes, but the quality and integrity of decision‑making itself. You are uncomfortable owning control frameworks or making accountability-driven decisions. You prefer static environments where QA processes are already fully mature and unchanging.

Take ownership of the existing QA framework across CDD, ODD, and EDD. Build strong oversight of case review processes and quality standards across the team. Identify gaps in current controls and strengthen consistency in financial crime decision‑making.

Begin introducing AI-driven QA capabilities to improve insight, efficiency, and scalability. Develop a roadmap for evolving QA into a modern, intelligence‑led control function. We're committed to supporting your development as a leader in financial crime quality and control — whether that means scaling the function, leading broader financial crime oversight initiatives, or shaping how AI transforms compliance assurance.

We can hire on a hybrid or in-person set‑up in any of the locations listed on the advert but you will need to be physically based in the country of your choice with a valid right to work. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role in any of the listed locations. Lunch is on us for your work days - enjoy catered meals or receive a lunch allowance based on your local office We offer 25 days of holiday + your public holidays We use MyndUp to give our employees access to free mental health and well‑being support with great success so far A 30-minute chat with our Talent Partner to discuss the role and your background.

A 45-minute chat with our Senior Manager VOC. A 60-minute chat with peers and/or stakeholders to check how you would think and act in the role. A 30-minute chat with a senior Stakeholder for a final alignment and any last minute questions Some of the key reasons why previous candidates didn’t make it past the application screening stage include: ~ CV writing and content: we receive a lot of CVs, and many of them are AI-generated.

A top tip from us is to use the "Achieved X, as measured by Y, by doing Z" formula (credit: English first. Since it's our company language, please submit your application in English. To keep things running smoothly, we only accept applications through our system—our support team can’t pass on calls or emails.

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📌 Head of Finance Quality (Madrid)
🏢 Pleo
📍 Madrid