Financial Crime Data Lead

Experis Scotland; Glasgow; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Experis Scotland is seeking a senior data leader to build and enhance the data foundations that underpin the financial crime operations of a regulated financial services organisation in the UK.

You will bring together data from customer, risk, compliance and transaction sources, design a central platform, and lead a small engineering team while partnering with compliance, risk and technology teams to drive end-to-end processes.

Qualifications

• Strong experience leading data engineering, data platform or data product initiatives within regulated environments.
• Advanced SQL and Python skills, with hands-on experience building scalable and reliable data solutions.
• Experience working with modern cloud data platforms such as Snowflake.
• Knowledge of integrating data from multiple internal and external systems using APIs and other integration methods.
• Understanding of financial crime concepts including customer onboarding, risk assessment, transaction monitoring, screening and investigation processes.
• Experience with data governance, security, privacy and regulatory controls.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to business stakeholders in a practical and straightforward way.
• Previous experience developing teams, setting standards and driving continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

• Leading the design and development of a central financial crime data platform.
• Bringing together data from a range of business systems including customer, risk, compliance and transaction-related sources.
• Creating and maintaining data models that provide a clear view of customers, risk profiles, alerts, investigations and outcomes.
• Driving data engineering best practices across ingestion, transformation, quality monitoring and governance.
• Developing reporting and management information that helps teams understand workloads, trends, control effectiveness and emerging risks.
• Working closely with compliance, risk, technology and operational teams to support end-to-end business processes.
• Establishing strong data ownership, security, auditability and governance standards.
• Building and leading a small, high-performing data engineering capability.
• Supporting future AI and automation opportunities through well-structured and trusted data foundations.

Skills

SQL

Python

Data platform leadership

Cloud platforms

Stakeholder communication

Data governance

Tools

Snowflake

CI/CD pipelines

Data orchestration tools

Job description

This is a senior data leadership role focused on building and improving the data foundations that support financial crime operations across a regulated financial services organisation.

The position is responsible for bringing together data from multiple systems into a single, trusted source that can be used for investigations, reporting, analytics, controls, risk management and future automation initiatives.

The successful candidate will combine strong technical data skills with a solid understanding of financial crime processes to help improve decision-making, reduce risk and create better visibility across the organisation.

What you'll be doing

• Leading the design and development of a central financial crime data platform.
• Bringing together data from a range of business systems including customer, risk, compliance and transaction-related sources.
• Creating and maintaining data models that provide a clear view of customers, risk profiles, alerts, investigations and outcomes.
• Driving data engineering best practices across ingestion, transformation, quality monitoring and governance.
• Developing reporting and management information that helps teams understand workloads, trends, control effectiveness and emerging risks.
• Working closely with compliance, risk, technology and operational teams to support end-to-end business processes.
• Establishing strong data ownership, security, auditability and governance standards.
• Building and leading a small, high-performing data engineering capability.
• Supporting future AI and automation opportunities through well-structured and trusted data foundations.

What they're looking for

• Strong experience leading data engineering, data platform or data product initiatives within regulated environments.
• Advanced SQL and Python skills, with hands‑on experience building scalable and reliable data solutions.
• Experience working with modern cloud data platforms such as Snowflake.
• Knowledge of integrating data from multiple internal and external systems using APIs and other integration methods.
• Understanding of financial crime concepts including customer onboarding, risk assessment, transaction monitoring, screening and investigation processes.
• Experience with data governance, security, privacy and regulatory controls.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to business stakeholders in a practical and straightforward way.
• Previous experience developing teams, setting standards and driving continuous improvement.

Technical environment

The role is heavily focused on SQL, Python and cloud-based data platforms, alongside modern data engineering and DevOps practices. Experience with data orchestration tools, CI/CD pipelines, data quality frameworks and emerging AI technologies would be beneficial.

What success looks like

• A trusted and reliable financial crime data platform used across the business.
• Better data quality and fewer manual interventions.
• Improved reporting and operational visibility.
• Reduced risk through stronger controls and more consistent data.
• Data foundations that support future analytics, automation and AI initiatives.
• A well‑established engineering function with clear standards, documentation and governance.