Global Internal Audit Lead — Post-Acquisition & AI-Enabled

Socket.dev; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Kraken, the crypto platform under Payward, seeks an experienced Internal Audit leader to drive risk-based audits across governance, regulatory, financial, and operational processes. You will manage post-acquisition integration audits and coordinate specialist support, with a focus on AI-enabled auditing and cross-jurisdiction coverage.

Join a globally distributed team; lead engagement teams, communicate findings to senior stakeholders, and apply AI responsibly while ensuring human judgment

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in internal audit, risk management, or regulatory examination within financial services, fintech, or crypto.
• Strong generalist audit background -- proven ability to plan and lead audits across business, financial, operational, and regulatory processes.
• Experience auditing complex, regulated environments; exposure to post-acquisition or M&A integration is a strong plus.
• Multi-jurisdiction experience -- auditing or assessing controls across more than one regulatory regime, ideally with globally distributed teams.
• Ability to get up to speed quickly on unfamiliar business models and direct specialist support where deep-technical depth is required.
• Experience communicating findings and recommendations to senior stakeholders, including board or audit committee audiences.
• Leadership experience, including managing audit workstreams, engagement teams, and co-sourced specialists.
• Comfortable operating across multiple time zones, partnering with globally distributed audit and business teams.
• Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead risk-based operational audits across the business - governance, regulatory, financial, and operational processes - and help shape coverage across the audit plan.
• As the current priority, lead post-acquisition integration audits - readiness, onboarding of acquired entities into the control environment, and the design and operating effectiveness of controls in acquired businesses.
• Assess integration and change risk across governance, regulatory licensing and change-of-control conditions, finance and operations, data migration, key-person retention, and conduct and culture.
• Perform risk assessments to identify key areas of exposure and prioritize audit coverage across the plan and the acquisition pipeline.
• Direct co-sourced specialist (SME) support for deep-technical areas, retaining Internal Audit ownership of judgment and conclusions.
• Lead AI-enabled auditing - apply generative AI, agentic workflows, and data analytics across the audit lifecycle to expand coverage and efficiency, while retaining human ownership of judgment and conclusions.

Skills

Internal audit

Risk management

Regulatory examination

Audit leadership

AI-enabled auditing

Cross-jurisdiction

Communication to executives

Time zone flexibility

Tools

Generative AI

Job description

Kraken, the crypto platform under Payward, seeks an experienced Internal Audit leader to drive risk-based audits across governance, regulatory, financial, and operational processes. You will manage post-acquisition integration audits and coordinate specialist support, with a focus on AI-enabled auditing and cross-jurisdiction coverage.

Join a globally distributed team; lead engagement teams, communicate findings to senior stakeholders, and apply AI responsibly while ensuring human judgment