---
title: 'Senior Financial Crime Operations Specialist (AFC) (f/m/x) at lemon.markets'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-financial-crime-operations-specialist-afc-f-m-x-lemon-markets-germany-b04169bf48pq'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-17'
---

# Senior Financial Crime Operations Specialist (AFC) (f/m/x) at lemon.markets

- **Company:** lemon.markets
- **Location:** Germany
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-17
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/lemon-markets/4f1b03f0-5e52-44fe-9c31-e90dfe3aba0c

## Job description

## About lemon.markets 🍋

We enable anyone to be an investor. Our mission is to grow investing opportunities for all European customers and businesses. By empowering FinTechs, banks, and wealth managers to offer investment products, we help create financial well-being for their customers. lemon.markets is a Brokerage-as-a-Service platform: simple digital access to capital markets through a single API. Our API-first infrastructure abstracts brokerage complexity with a well-documented API, a self-service customer operations portal, and a clear regulatory framework, so partners can launch customer-centric, compliant products in weeks, not months. As part of the dwpbank Group, we share a clear goal: we enable anyone to be an investor by making investing in capital markets more accessible. By combining dwpbank’s long-standing expertise and stability with lemon.markets’ technology-first mindset and speed, we are building a modern, modular securities services ecosystem. Together, we offer faster time-to-market, modular services, and a modern customer experience that helps financial service providers stay competitive and respond more flexibly in a changing market.

## Your Mission

Help build the financial crime operations that make investing safer and scalable. As our Senior Financial Crime Operations Specialist (AFC), you will be the sole dedicated AFC Operations specialist in the first line of defence. This is a high-ownership role: you will shape the AFC operating model from the ground up, owning hands-on operations while building the processes, controls, workflows and documentation needed to support a growing regulated business. You will work closely with the MLRO and Second Line of Defence on oversight, escalation and regulatory matters, and with Customer Lifecycle, Product, Engineering and Operations to make AFC controls effective, scalable and audit-ready.

During your first 6–12 months, you will establish and improve processes covering transaction monitoring, customer screening, Source of Wealth reviews, investigations and regulatory information requests, while identifying opportunities to improve efficiency through better workflows, tooling and automation.

This role is for someone who enjoys autonomy, brings structure to evolving environments and can influence stakeholders across teams. You will not be joining a AFC operations team; you will be the main hands-on AFC Operations owner and will have the opportunity to shape how the function develops.

In this role you will:

- Own hands-on AFC operations across transaction monitoring, customer screening, Source of Wealth reviews, investigations and regulatory information requests. You will make risk-based decisions and collaborate with the MLRO and Second Line of Defence on escalations and suspicious activity reporting.
- Build and maintain the AFC operating model by translating regulatory requirements and risk assessments into clear controls, workflows, work instructions, ownership and audit-ready documentation across the customer lifecycle.
- Improve and optimise AFC processes and workflows, identifying opportunities to reduce manual effort, strengthen control effectiveness and increase operational efficiency through automation and better tooling.
- Partner with Product and Engineering to define operational requirements and implement practical workflow, tooling and automation improvements. You do not need to be a software engineer, but you should be comfortable working with technical teams to turn AFC needs into effective solutions.
- Manage stakeholders across Customer Lifecycle, Product, Engineering, Operations, Banking and Investing, as well as external partners, acting as the main AFC subject-matter expert and building alignment across teams with different priorities.

You’ll be successful in this role if you:

- Bring substantial hands-on experience in financial crime or AFC operations within a regulated financial-services, fintech, banking, payments or investment environment.
- Have professional fluency in written and spoken German, enabling you to work independently with German-speaking stakeholders, and communicate confidently in English. German and English communication skills are required for this role.
- Have a proven track record of building, documenting, standardising and optimising AFC or financial-crime processes, controls and workflows, including identifying automation opportunities and partnering with Product, Engineering or other technical teams to implement effective improvements.
- Have practical experience handling suspicious activity cases, preparing or contributing to suspicious activity or transaction reports, and using goAML or a comparable reporting system.
- Can translate regulatory requirements, risk assessments and control expectations into clear, consistently applied, documented and audit-ready operational procedures, with a solid understanding of relevant German and European financial-crime requirements.
- Have strong stakeholder-management skills and the confidence to act as the main AFC subject-matter expert across regulatory, operational, business and technical teams.
- Are comfortable working independently, taking ownership and bringing structure to ambiguity while building AFC Operations without an established team around you.

## How we take care of you

- 🚀 Compensation package: We offer you a competitive salary, based on your experience and the value-add you bring to lemon.markets.
- 🕑 Flexible working hours: We trust people to choose when they work best and avoid a rigid 9 to 5 mindset. You decide on the rhythm that helps you do your best work, with only shared core hours from 12:00 to 16:00 to support collaboration.
- 🏢 Hybrid work setup: You can work from anywhere in Germany within a hybrid model. At the same time, in-person collaboration is a key part of our culture. That being said, individual contributer lemoneers work 4 days or more per month on-site in our Berlin office, spending quality time together with the team at events, onsites/offsites or over team dinners.
- 📈 Grow with us: We take your personal development seriously! You’ll get regular mentorship and stretch opportunities, a clear career development framework with frequent feedback conversations as well as an annual learning budget.
- 🌱 People & culture: You’ll feel our culture in the small things, like Polaroids from our lemoneers’ first day and our monthly new-joiner breakfasts. But also in the bigger things, like celebrating the onboarding of new partners or our annual offsites, where the whole company comes together to connect, reflect, and celebrate.
- 💛 Perks & benefits: We choose benefits that add actual value. We sponsor a Deutschlandticket for employees on unlimited contracts, plus 50% off on Beatvest - our partner for financial education and investing.
- 🏝 Workation: Get out of here! At lemon.markets you can work remotely from anywhere in the EU for up to 10 consecutive days at a time, and up to 60 days per year in total.

As an equal opportunity employer, lemon.markets is committed to building an inclusive workplace. The company welcomes people from all different backgrounds, including age, citizenship, ethnic and racial origins, gender identities, individuals with disabilities, marital status, religions and ideologies, and sexual orientations to apply. If you feel this role could be a great match for you even if you don’t tick every box, we’d still love to hear from you, please apply. You have any questions? Feel free to contact us via talent@lemon.markets

## About lemon.markets

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: lemon.markets provides API-first infrastructure that enables companies to launch regulated investment products for European customers.
- **Entity Type**: Private
- **Headquarters**: Berlin, Germany
- **Founded**: 2020
- **Founders**: Max Linden, Laura Cüppers, Markus Gunter

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Financial Services, Fintech, Brokerage Infrastructure, API
- Target customers: B2B – banks, brokers, wealth managers, software companies, and EMIs looking to add investment functionality to their products.
- Mission or purpose statement: "To grow investing opportunities for all European customers and businesses, providing seamless access to capital markets." They envision a future where "anyone is an investor."

## Products & Services
- **lemon.markets API**: A developer-friendly, API-first infrastructure that allows partners to build and launch customer-centric, compliant investment products. It covers the full value chain of investing: account opening & management, order management & execution, custody & asset servicing, and taxes, reporting & receipts.
- **Modular Platform (Bundled & Unbundled)**: Partners can choose a bundled, end-to-end solution (where lemon.markets handles securities, cash accounts, and all regulatory/operational complexities) or an unbundled approach (where partners bring their own cash accounts and leverage lemon.markets for securities accounts and regulatory management).
- **Self-Service Customer Portal**: A dashboard for managing customer operations, requests, and reporting.
- **Regulatory Coverage**: Through BaFin licenses, lemon.markets handles all regulatory, technical, and operational challenges for its partners.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available.
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – Not publicly available; the company has joined forces with dwpbank (Deutsche WertpapierService Bank AG), a major German securities services bank, for its next growth phase. Previous funding rounds were not disclosed in the available sources.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: dwpbank (Deutsche WertpapierService Bank AG), Vivid Money (launched a pan-European multi-asset offering with lemon.markets).
- **Growth Signals**: The partnership with dwpbank signals a major scaling event, providing access to a €2.2 trillion custodian network. They have launched a pan-European multi-asset offering with Vivid Money. The company is actively hiring across multiple senior roles (VP Growth, VP Product, VP Legal, VP Finance, Head of Partnerships, etc.).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Regulatory Moats**: Holds BaFin licenses, which are notoriously difficult and time-consuming for new entrants to obtain, creating a significant barrier to entry.
- **Full-Stack, One-Stop-Shop**: Uniquely abstracts the entire technical, operational, and regulatory complexity of launching an investment product, reducing build time from months to weeks.
- **Platform Modularity**: Offers both bundled and unbundled solutions, making them flexible for partners with existing infrastructure (e.g., banks with their own cash accounts) as well as for startups needing a full turnkey solution.
- **Customer-Centric Design**: The infrastructure is built from the customer's point of view, enabling partners to deliver a superior user experience from day one.

## Strategic Focus
- **Pan-European Expansion**: The partnership with dwpbank and the launch of a multi-asset offering with Vivid Money indicate a strategic focus on scaling across Europe.
- **Deepening the Product Suite**: They are actively hiring for VP of Product and VP of Growth, signaling a focus on product development and go-to-market strategy.
- **Partnership Growth**: Targeting banks, brokers, wealth managers, and software companies to embed investment capabilities into their existing customer relationships.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven**: The company is on a clear mission to democratize investing for all Europeans, offering a strong sense of purpose.
- **Culture & Principles**: Known as "lemoneers," the team values collaboration, customer centricity, and making a real impact. The interview process includes a dedicated "principles session" to assess cultural fit.
- **Hybrid Work Model**: "Onsite first, but remote flexible." The team is expected to spend at least four days per month in the Berlin office (located in the lively Kreuzberg/Neukölln area), with flexibility to work remotely the rest of the time.
- **Growth Trajectory**: Currently in a high-growth phase backed by a major strategic partner (dwpbank), offering significant career development opportunities.
- **Competitive Compensation**: Offers a competitive salary and benefits package, flexible working hours, and the chance to work alongside an experienced leadership team from the fintech and financial services space.

## Sources
1. [lemon.markets Company Page](https://www.lemon.markets/company)
2. [lemon.markets Careers Page](https://www.lemon.markets/careers)
3. [lemon.markets Website](https://www.lemon.markets/)
4. [lemon.markets Careers (German)](https://www.lemon.markets/en-de/careers)

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