Product Owner - Financial Crime & Compliance

About the role

We are building a greenfield Financial Crime & Compliance platform in the UAE and need a Product Owner to lead the workstream from inception to delivery. You will shape product direction, translate business needs into specifications, and drive delivery across onboarding, KYC, transaction monitoring and case management.

Key responsibilities

• Own product direction, collaborating with the business lead to prioritize features and delivery order.
• Run the end‑to‑end requirements process, turning domain input into clear, buildable specifications.
• Lead delivery of onboarding and screening capabilities, including KYC/CDD, sanctions, PEP screening, watchlist management and risk‑rating logic.
• Own monitoring and investigation capabilities such as transaction monitoring, fraud alerting and regulatory reporting workflows.
• Coordinate across engineering, design, operations, risk and compliance to manage dependencies and keep delivery on track.
• Report progress and flag risks to senior stakeholders.

Required profile

• 10+ years of experience building or overhauling onboarding, screening, monitoring or case‑management products.
• Proven track record delivering across engineering, operations, risk and compliance in banking or fintech.
• Ability to challenge senior stakeholders, including second‑line risk and compliance functions.
• Strong familiarity with AML, fraud, sanctions, KYC or regulatory compliance product work; exposure to platforms such as Actimize, SAS, Quantexa, ComplyAdvantage, Napier or Featurespace is a plus.
• Knowledge of UAE/GCC regulatory frameworks (e.g., CBUAE, goAML) is useful but not essential.
• Comfortable working in ambiguous environments and building solutions from scratch.

Required skills

• APIs
• Event‑driven systems
• Rules engines
• Actimize
• SAS
• Quantexa
• ComplyAdvantage
• Napier
• Featurespace