---
title: 'Head of Financial Crime at xAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-financial-crime-xai-london-d7eb1309hzrc'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-09'
---

# Head of Financial Crime at xAI

- **Company:** xAI
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Posted:** 2026-08-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-09
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai/jobs/5207615007

## Job description

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today, SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary and expanding consciousness to the stars.

SpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to help humanity understand the universe. Our teams are building the full Super Intelligence stack: from our Colossus supercomputers, to Grok models, to our suite of applications, including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X. We're creating a powerful flywheel where more compute trains better models, better models power more useful products, and what we learn from people using those products shapes what we build next.

## HEAD OF FINANCIAL CRIME

The UK financial crime program is being built now, and it has to stand up to the FCA. This role sits in Compliance, reports to the US BSA/AML Officer, and owns the UK framework end to end — AML/CTF, sanctions, fraud, ABC, KYC/CDD/EDD, transaction monitoring, SARs, and the operating rhythm. You will still work the hard cases. It is a builder seat with accountability, not a queue job with “strategy” in the title.

If you have eight or more years inside an FCA-regulated bank, EMI, PI, or payments firm, have owned or rebuilt a financial crime control framework, and can still open a file, this is the seat. You will build the UK program from the ground up, setting the standards the team and the FCA will use. This is consumer-scale payments financial crime work – not a private-banking book – and you’ll sit directly with Product and Engineering. You’ll operate in a small team with a direct line to the US BSA/AML Officer, where scope is broad and process is lean. The measure of success is a program that still works a year later, and the role sits alongside MLRO / SMF17-adjacent duties for the UK entity.

## RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Design and run the UK financial crime programme: policy, procedures, CDD/EDD, risk rating, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, SAR handling, escalation, QA, and training
- Turn MLR 2017, POCA, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act, JMLSG, the FCA Financial Crime Guide, SYSC 6.3, and payments/EMI expectations into something operations and product can run
- Own the UK business-wide risk assessment and keep it honest as the product, customer mix, and channels change
- Handle complex cases — PEPs, adverse media, sanctions hits, high-risk onboarding, fraud typologies, escalations — then use the queue to fix the framework
- Stand up first- and second-line controls: documentation, workflows, vendor oversight, quality sampling, MI, and issue management
- Put UK requirements into the customer journey with Legal, Operations, Product, and Engineering. Be the UK voice in global design decisions
- Report on quality, residual risk, throughput, and control health, and prepare the program for internal audit, skilled-person reviews, and FCA scrutiny
- Build the operating model as the team grows.
- Hire, coach, and set the standard
- Support MLRO / SMF17-adjacent duties as the UK permissions model requires

## BASiC QUALIFICATIONS:

- 8+ years of hands-on experience with financial crime in a regulated UK firm (bank, EMI, PI, payments, or e-money), including substantial KYC/CDD/EDD

## PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

- You will still do the cases, close gaps in a small team, do not wait for a 30-page RACI
- You know the UK regime well enough to argue a point — MLR 2017, JMLSG, POCA, UK sanctions, FCA expectations — and how it lands in a payments product
- You have designed or rebuilt a framework, procedure, or control, not only cleared files or written a policy nobody ran
- You have led people or a workstream. You can defend a risk decision and explain it to the Product without jargon
- EU financial crime experience
- Experience with the EU AML package, 6AMLD, EBA guidelines, national transposition, or an EU FIU/regulator, especially on cross-border payments, wallets, or EMI/PI products (useful because X Money will not stay inside one perimeter)

## ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

- In-office five days a week; occasional work-from-home when needed

## COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

- Competitive base + equity
- UK private medical covering GPs and specialists; pension; life insurance
- 25 days’ paid time off; lunch and dinner allowance

SpaceXSI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our [Recruitment Privacy Notice](https://x.ai/legal/recruitment-privacy-notice).

## About xAI

## Company Overview
- **One‑liner**: xAI builds artificial intelligence systems to accelerate human scientific discovery and “understand the universe,” with products spanning frontier reasoning models, real‑time voice, and generative media.
- **Entity Type**: Private (last funding round: Series E, January 2026; acquired by SpaceX in February 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, USA (additional offices in Seattle, WA; Memphis, TN; London, UK)
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Elon Musk

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI research, large language models, voice AI, generative media)
- Target customers: B2B (developers via API), B2C (consumers via Grok on 𝕏, SuperGrok subscriptions), Enterprise & Government (xAI for Government)
- Mission: “To understand the universe” – building AI that extends what humanity can know and do.

## Products & Services
- **Grok (base models)** : A conversational AI assistant modeled after *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy*, available on the 𝕏 platform and via API.
- **Grok 4 / Grok 4 Heavy**: The most intelligent reasoning models, featuring native tool use and real‑time search integration (SuperGrok and Premium+ tiers).
- **Grok Voice Agent API / Voice Agent Builder**: Create custom voice agents in under two minutes (no‑code) – includes speech‑to‑text, text‑to‑speech, custom voice cloning, and multilingual support.
- **Grok Imagine API**: State‑of‑the‑art video generation API (quality, cost, latency).
- **Grok‑1.5 / Grok‑2 / Grok‑2 mini**: Earlier model releases with improved reasoning and 128K context length.
- **PromptIDE**: An integrated development environment for prompt engineering and interpretability research.
- **xAI for Government**: A suite of frontier AI products tailored for U.S. government customers.
- **Colossus Supercomputer**: 200,000‑GPU cluster built in 122 days, used for training xAI models; now also leased to Anthropic (Colossus 1 agreement).

All products are delivered as SaaS, API, and model weights (open‑source release of Grok‑1).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Funding**: 
  - Series B (May 2024): $6 B 
  - Series C (Dec 2024): $6 B (led by A16Z, BlackRock, Fidelity, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia, Valor, Vy Capital, others)
  - Series E (Jan 2026): $20 B
  - Acquisition by SpaceX announced Feb 2, 2026 (terms not disclosed).
- **Key Metric**: Total disclosed funding ~$32 B; annual revenue not publicly available.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: A16Z, BlackRock, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital, Morgan Stanley, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Anthropic (Colossus deal), U.S. Department of War (selected Dec 2025).
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Rapid scaling from founding to 200K‑GPU cluster in 122 days.
  - Over 214 open roles listed on Greenhouse as of mid‑2026.
  - #1 on Big Bench Audio (Grok 4 audio performance).
  - Expanded into voice agents, video generation, and government verticals within 3 years.
  - Acquisition by SpaceX signals deep integration with space‑tech resources.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Compute infrastructure**: Colossus supercomputer – one of the largest GPU clusters in existence, enabling faster training and larger models.
- **Model performance**: Grok 4 claims “most intelligent model in the world” with top benchmarks (Big Bench Audio #1).
- **Vertical integration**: Tight coupling with 𝕏 platform for data, distribution, and real‑time world knowledge.
- **Speed of execution**: “Move quickly and fix things” culture; built Colossus in 122 days.
- **Government contracts**: Early access to public‑sector AI markets (U.S. Department of War).
- **Talent density**: Small, focused team of researchers and engineers; in‑person work accelerates iteration.

## Strategic Focus
- **Continue advancing frontier reasoning** (Grok 4 Heavy, next‑gen models).
- **Expand voice and multimodal APIs** for developers (Voice Agent Builder, Custom Voices Library).
- **Deepen government / defense partnerships** (xAI for Government, Department of War).
- **Scale infrastructure** post‑acquisition via SpaceX resources.
- **Remain “open” where strategic** (open‑source release of Grok‑1 weights).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Ambitious goals, fast execution” – rejects consensus in favor of first‑principles reasoning. In‑person work prioritized (Palo Alto, Seattle, Memphis, London).
- **Benefits**: 
  - Competitive cash + equity compensation.
  - Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance.
  - 401(k) plan, fertility benefits, flexible vacation.
  - Visa sponsorship offered.
- **Engineering culture**: No recruiters for assessments – applications reviewed directly by technical team. Interview process: application → screening → technical interviews → offer.
- **Mission‑driven**: Opportunity to work on frontier AI models that aim to “advance humanity.”
- **Perks**: In‑person collaboration, fast‑paced environment, ownership of meaningful projects.

## Sources
1. [x.ai/company](https://x.ai/company)
2. [x.ai/careers](https://x.ai/careers)
3. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai)
4. [x.ai/news](https://x.ai/news)
5. [x.ai/careers/open-roles](https://x.ai/careers/open-roles)

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