Director, Financial Crimes Technology

We are a hybrid, remote-office company dedicated to growing our talent anywhere! We have onsite locations in: Sioux Falls, SD,  Scottsdale, AZ,  Louisville, KY,  Troy, MI,  Franklin, TN,  Easton, PA. At Pathward, we take tremendous pride in our purpose to create financial inclusion for all™. We are a financial empowerment company that works with innovators to increase financial availability, choice, and opportunity for all.  We strive to remove barriers that traditional institutions put in the way of financial access, and promote economic mobility by providing responsible, secure, high quality financial products. We are a team of problem solvers and innovators who celebrate our differences and know that our unique perspectives make us stronger and well-positioned for success.  We celebrate, and embrace, our team members through our  *HUMBLE*HUNGRY*SMART  approach, and we believe that we are strongest when we embrace the voices of our employees, customers, partners, and the communities we serve.  About the Role: The Director of BSA Technology is the BSA functional lead responsible for ensuring the Bank's screening models are accurately implemented, operating as intended, producing reliable and explainable outputs, and meeting all applicable regulatory and internal governance expectations. This role resides within the Financial Crimes Program and Technology Assurance team and serves as the bridge between model design — owned by stakeholder groups within the broader BSA Department — and technology delivery, owned by a technology/product counterpart responsible for software implementation and vendor execution. The Director partners with BSA model design stakeholders to understand design intent and translate it into detailed requirements, then works with the technology/product counterpart to ensure those requirements are built and delivered as specified. This role provides strategic oversight of model implementation, change management, and ongoing performance monitoring of model outputs and data quality from a compliance lens. This is not a model design role. Decisions regarding risk, fuzzy logic, and calibration thresholds reside with the appropriate BSA stakeholder groups. This is also not a software delivery role. System build, vendor management, and technical deployment are owned by the technology/product counterpart. This role's mandate is to define what the technology must do from a BSA perspective, validate that it does so correctly, and monitor ongoing performance to ensure continued accuracy and regulatory alignment. What You Will Need: Requirements & Functional Ownership Partner with BSA/AML stakeholders, Compliance, and Financial Crimes teams to translate screening strategy and program requirements into detailed functional specifications, business rules, acceptance criteria, and expected system outcomes for technology and product partners Serve as the BSA/AML subject matter expert during requirements discussions, ensuring regulatory requirements, risk considerations, and operational impacts are appropriately reflected in system design and functional specifications Evaluate and challenge proposed technical solutions to ensure alignment with BSA/AML program objectives, screening methodology, risk management expectations, and intended business outcomes Provide functional oversight for customer screening, transaction screening, watchlist screening, and alert generation capabilities to ensure solutions are designed and implemented in accordance with program requirements Maintain and prioritize a portfolio of enhancement requests, defect remediation efforts, model tuning activities, and regulatory-driven changes to support continuous improvement and evolving compliance obligations Partner with Technology, Product, Data, and Operations teams to ensure screening logic, data requirements, and system functionality are implemented consistently across platforms and business lines Testing, Validation & Ongoing Monitoring Own user acceptance testing (UAT) for BSA/AML screening platform enhancements, model changes, system releases, data integrations, tuning initiatives, and regulatory-driven updates, including development of test strategies, test plans, test cases, execution oversight, and sign-off procedures Validate that BSA/AML screening outcomes are accurately generated, appropriately risk-ranked, and consistently applied across customer screening, transaction monitoring, watchlist screening, payment screening, and related financial crimes detection processes Oversee ongoing monitoring of screening outputs, alert volumes, and operational performance to identify anomalies, unexpected trends, data quality issues, or changes in model effectiveness, escalating findings and recommendations to Compliance, Financial Crimes, and model stakeholders Lead tuning and optimization activities designed to improve screening effectiveness, reduce false positives, enhance alert quality, and balance operational efficiency with regulatory and risk management expectations Investigate and resolve discrepancies between expected and actual screening outcomes, partnering with Compliance, model design teams, Technology/Product teams, and data stakeholders to identify root causes and implement corrective actions Establish and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and effectiveness metrics to evaluate screening performance and support ongoing program enhancements Ensure completeness and accuracy of functional documentation including screening logic, business rules, data mappings, model assumptions, validation results, tuning decisions, monitoring activities, control evidence, and remediation actions to support regulatory examinations, internal audits, and governance requirements Leadership & Cross-Functional Coordination Coordinate with Technology, Product, Data, and platform partners on delivery timelines, release schedules, enhancement priorities, and issue res