Director of Engineering – AI-Driven Fraud & AML

At Tide, we help SMEs save time and money in the running of their businesses by offering business accounts and related banking services, as well as a comprehensive set of highly usable and connected administrative solutions, from invoicing to accounting. Tide is transforming the small business banking market and now supports over 2 million members globally across the UK, India, Germany, and France. Using advanced technology, all solutions are designed with SMEs in mind. With quick onboarding, low fees, and innovative features, we thrive on making data-driven decisions to serve our mission: to help SMEs save time and money so they can get back to doing what they love.

We’re looking for a Director of Engineering to lead our Ongoing Monitoring technology teams. This group is at the heart of how we serve our members – building the systems that power Tide’s fraud, risk, and AML operations. A Director of Engineering at Tide for Fraud, AML and Risk leads the strategic vision and development of AI/ML-driven detection systems. The role requires scaling machine learning models to analyze massive transaction volumes, overseeing model governance, and ensuring compliance with financial regulations. This is a role for someone who loves scaling technology and people. You’ll partner with Product, Risk, and Operations leaders to shape the future of our Ongoing Monitoring platform.

As a Director of Engineering at Tide you’ll be:

• Owning the technology strategy and roadmap for Ongoing Monitoring (Fraud, Financial Risk, AML, AI workflows, tooling, and automation).
• Building autonomous, multi-agent workflows that automatically investigate alerts, query external data sources, chain complex reasoning steps, and make initial risk determinations.
• Developing detection systems to identify and block adversarial agentic behaviour, such as automated bot swarms, deepfake-powered KYC bypasses, and algorithmic fraud loops.
• Ensuring all AI systems are auditable, explainable, and aligned with global anti-money laundering (AML) directives and data privacy standards.
• Leading and growing multiple engineering squads – building an inclusive, high-performance culture.
• Partnering with Product, Data, AI, Risk, and Ops to deliver tools that improve our predictive ML modelling and agentic AI capabilities.
• Championing automation, data-driven decision making, and AI/ML opportunities to reduce operational cost and friction.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• 18+ years of engineering experience with 7+ years in leadership roles (Director/Senior Director level).
• Machine Learning: Strong experience in supervised and unsupervised models, decision trees, neural networks, and Large Language Models (LLMs).
• Agent Frameworks: Hands-on experience with multi-agent orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, AutoGen) used to build self-correcting compliance workflows.
• Fintech Domain Knowledge: Deep understanding of fraud vectors (e.g., mule accounts, account takeovers, synthetic identity fraud) and AML typologies.
• Adversarial AI Security: Proven track record in detecting deepfakes, synthetic identities, and prompt injection attacks targeting financial systems.
• Risk/Scale: Minimum 7+ years building and deploying production-grade, risk-scoring environments at scale.
• Experience with fintech platforms - risk/compliance tooling (AML, Fraud, Financial Risk, SARs, KYX, agentic AI detections).
• Excellent people leadership skills – you know how to grow and inspire teams.
• Solid technical foundations: cloud-native architectures, microservices, event-driven systems, and data platforms (AWS or GCP).

WHAT YOU’LL GET IN RETURN

• Competitive Compensation - competitive salary and share options.
• Time Off – Generous annual leave on top of bank holidays.
• Parental Leave – Paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave to support your family journey.
• Sabbatical – Extended unpaid and paid leave options after completing milestone years with Tide.
• Access to salary sacrifice benefits – like Nursery (could save up to 47% on fees!) and Cycle to Work discounts.
• Health Insurance – Comprehensive Private family insurance plan.
• Life & Accident Cover – Comprehensive accidental and life insurance protection.
• Mental Wellbeing – Access to therapy sessions, courses, meditations, and workshops.
• Retirement Planning – Build your retirement fund faster with Tide’s pension scheme on eligible earnings.
• Volunteering & Development Days – Paid days annually for volunteering or personal growth.
• Learning & Development – Annual budget for books, courses, coaching, and more.
• WOO (Work Outside the Office) – Work from abroad for up to 90 days annually.
• Home Office Setup – Contribution towards setting up your home office.
• Laptop Ownership – Keep your old laptop and get a new one when it’s time for a replacement.
• Snacks & Meals – Daily breakfast spread with all-day coffee, tea, and juices.

At Tide, we champion a flexible workplace model that supports both in-person and remote work to cater to the specific needs of our different teams. While remote work is supported, we believe in the power of face-to-face interactions to foster team spirit and collaboration. Our offices are designed as hubs for innovation and team-building, where we encourage regular in-person gatherings to foster a strong sense of community.

At Tide, we believe that we can only succeed if we let our differences enrich our culture. Our Tideans come from a variety of backgrounds and experience levels. We consider everyone irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, veteran, neurodiversity or differently-abled status. We celebrate diversity in our workforce as a cornerstone of our success. Our commitment to a broad spectrum of ideas and backgrounds is what enables us to build products that resonate with our members’ diverse needs and lives. We are One Team and foster a transparent and inclusive environment, where everyone’s voice is heard.