Director, Product Management – AML & Sanctions Screening

About Us
Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters – to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

The selected candidate will join the Compliance Product team within Global Ethics & Compliance function and report to the Vice President of Compliance Technology Operations. This role is responsible for defining and executing the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for Visa’s enterprise AML and sanctions screening capabilities across customer, counterparty, and transaction flows.

This is a highly specialized leadership role requiring deep expertise in sanctions screening controls, product management, and compliance technology, with end-to-end ownership spanning strategy, requirements, implementation, tuning, and ongoing optimization of screening tools, processes, and controls across Visa.

The role operates at the intersection of Compliance, Product, Engineering, Data, and Operations, translating global regulatory requirements and policy expectations into scalable, auditable, and operationally effective screening solutions.

This leader will own the enterprise product strategy for sanctions screening and related AML screening capabilities, including the modernization and continuous enhancement of controls that detect and prevent prohibited activity across Visa’s ecosystem. The role requires a leader who can define long-term strategy while also driving detailed execution across product requirements, screening logic, tuning, list management, test strategy, implementation, production validation, operational metrics, and control governance.

The Director will partner closely with Compliance, Legal, Risk, Operations, Product, Engineering, Data, Architecture, regional teams, and external vendors to ensure screening capabilities are aligned to sanctions regulations, internal policy, business priorities, and operational realities. This includes supporting new product initiatives and ensuring sanctions controls are designed early and correctly for new payment flows, geographies, counterparties, and business models.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the end-to-end product portfolio for AML and sanctions screening, including name screening, transaction screening, counterparty screening, and ongoing monitoring across customer and payment lifecycles
• Define and drive product strategy, roadmap, and target-state architecture for enterprise screening platforms, ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements, business priorities, and new product initiatives
• Lead design and enhancement of screening logic, including fuzzy matching, deterministic rules, thresholds, suppression strategies, and alerting frameworks to balance risk coverage and false positive reduction
• Translate sanctions regulations (OFAC, UK, EU, UN, etc.) and internal policy into clear, detailed product and technical requirements, including screening behavior, alert generation, workflows, and decisioning
• Lead product execution across the lifecycle: requirements, design, development, UAT, back-testing, production validation, and post-deployment monitoring
• Advance the use of next-generation AI capabilities (including ML and generative AI) to improve screening effectiveness, enable intelligent alert triage, enhance analyst productivity, and detect increasingly sophisticated sanctions evasion patterns
• Own end-to-end list management capabilities, including list ingestion, normalization, versioning, and governance across global sanctions regimes
• Drive controls for beneficial ownership and indirect exposure, including ownership-rule logic (e.g., 50% rule) and complex ownership structures
• Define and execute tuning strategies to optimize alert quality, reduce false positives, and improve detection effectiveness using data-driven analysis
• Oversee false-hit/suppression list governance, ensuring appropriate controls, review cycles, and safeguards to prevent unintended risk exposure
• Own product oversight for SIT, UAT, parallel runs, back-testing, production validation, model/rule verification, and post-deployment monitoring for sanctions screening solutions
• Drive issue triage, root-cause analysis, and remediation of control or system failures, including defects tied to data quality, list updates, configuration, logic, workflow, and downstream integrations
• Establish robust frameworks for testing, auditability, and regulatory defensibility, including independent validation, control evidence, and issue remediation
• Define and monitor KPIs, KRIs, and control metrics such as alert volumes, false positives, coverage gaps, latency, and operational efficiency
• Partner with Product teams to ensure new products and payment flows are enabled with appropriate sanctions controls from design through launch
• Act as the primary interface across Compliance, Risk, Legal, Engineering, Data, Operations, and vendors, driving alignment and execution
• Lead and develop a team of product managers and domain specialists, while influencing senior stakeholders through strong subject matter depth, crisp communication and sound judgement

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager. 

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• 10 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/ MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience in financial crime, compliance technology, or product management, with deep specialization in AML and sanctions screening and prior leadership experience
• Strong expertise in sanctions screening concepts and controls, including name screening, transaction screening, counterparty screening, ongoing monitoring, and watchlist management
• Hands-on experience designing and managing screening systems, including screening logic, fuzzy matching, thresholds, tuning, suppression strategies, and alert optimization
• Deep understanding of sanctions regulations and frameworks (OFAC, UK, EU, UN) and ability to translate regulatory expectations into scalable product solutions
• Strong experience with list management, data quality, and screening system configurations across global sanctions lists
• Proven ability to define and execute UAT, validation, testing strategies, and production monitoring for screening systems in regulated environments
• Experience with beneficial ownership, indirect exposure, and ownership-rule logic in sanctions screening programs
• Strong analytical skills with ability to assess false positives, false negatives, coverage gaps, alert quality, and control effectiveness using data and metrics
• Experience enabling new product initiatives, ensuring compliance controls are embedded early in the product lifecycle
• Strong stakeholder management, communication, and leadership skills, with the ability to influence across Product, Compliance, Technology, and Operations

U.S. Applicants Only

Work Hours

Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements

This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements

This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer