Senior ML Engineering Team Lead - Financial Crime
At a glance
Senior Risk & Financial Compliance role at Wise. London · full-time · £135,000–£175,000 base.
financeroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Set the architecture for a configuration-driven pipeline that deploys and monitors financial crime models
- Build a repeatable route from data science research into production for traditional and newer model architectures
- Create automated retraining, drift checks, threshold management and audit records for model operations
- Hire and develop senior ML engineers, setting team standards and growth paths
- Make build-versus-use choices with platform partners and lead the Risk Modelling engineering strategy
What you bring
- You have built or led an ML engineering or model-lifecycle automation team, defining standards other teams adopted
- You can design model-factory architecture, assess training pipelines and diagnose inference slowdowns
- You have worked in high-volume systems with tight latency limits and serious financial impact from model failures
- You have recruited and developed senior engineers, building a team rather than inheriting one
- You can make architecture decisions with incomplete information and guide work across deep learning, ML systems and production infrastructure
Who this fits
This role suits a technically deep leader who wants to establish a new ML engineering function and shape its direction, rather than focus only on delivery management. You would lead senior ML systems and applied ML engineers. The position is based in London with a hybrid arrangement.
From the employer
Wise is a global technology company, building the best way to move and manage the world’s money.
Min fees. Max ease. Full speed.
Whether people and businesses are sending money to another country, spending abroad, or making and receiving international payments, Wise is on a mission to make their lives easier and save them money.
As part of our team, you will be helping us create an entirely new network for the world's money.
For everyone, everywhere.
More about our mission and what we offer.
About the role:
Wise protects millions of customers and billions in transactions from fraud, money laundering and financial crime. Our ML systems are the front line of defense - operating at a global scale of 100K requests/minute under strict sub-50ms latency SLAs. We need an exceptional technical leader to own how these models are engineered, shipped and scaled.
We're hiring a Senior ML Engineering Lead to build and grow Wise's Risk Modelling engineering pillar. You will own the full model lifecycle standard for financial crime detection - from offline experimentation to production deployment and real-time monitoring and build the team to execute it. Your job is to build the automated engineering ecosystem and organisation that scales this safely to hundreds of models.
This is a rare greenfield leadership role with strong investment and engagement from Wise's CTO and senior leadership.
How we work:
Risk ML sits within Wise's FinCrime organisation, owning the full ML and AI foundation for financial crime detection. We're have three dedicated pillars - Feature Platform, Learning Loop and Risk Modelling. You'll lead the Risk Modelling pillar, leading a team of Senior ML Systems Engineers and Applied ML Engineers.
We operate with high autonomy and low hierarchy. You'll own the engineering strategy end-to-end - from architecture decisions and infrastructure design through to hiring, team culture and cross-platform partnerships. We value leaders who shape direction and build teams, not just manage delivery.
What will you be working on?:
The Model Factory: Architect the declarative pipeline that turns a configuration file into a deployed, monitored model - the engineering backbone for scaling to hundreds of models
The Experimentation Engine: Establish the reusable path from research (partnering with DS Research) to high-throughput production for traditional and modern architectures
Model Operations: Build the infrastructure for automated retraining, drift detection, threshold simulation/management and audit trails - the operational layer required to run hundreds of models safely at scale
The Team: Recruit, lead and mentor a world-class team of ML engineers. Establish a high-performance, engineering-first culture from scratch - setting hiring standards, technical bar and growth paths
Cross-Platform Partnership: Define and navigate the partnership with key platform teams - owning the build vs consume decisions for your pillar
What do you need?:
You've explicitly led or built an ML Engineering or model lifecycle automation team (not just used one) at a high-growth company - you defined the standards that other engineering teams followed
System-level and mathematical depth: you can design a model factory architecture, review a training pipeline & debug a runtime inference latency regression
Experience in high-throughput environments where latency constraints are tight and model failures carry massive financial consequences
Track record of hiring and developing senior engineers - you've built a team, not just inherited one
Ability to navigate ambiguity and make architecture-level decisions with incomplete information - this is a greenfield build, not an optimisation role
Strong enough technically to guide and review across deep learning, ML systems and production infrastructure - you lead through depth, not just delegation
Nice to Have:
Experience at a tier-1 fintech or payments company
Experience with graph-based methods (GNNs, entity resolution) in production
Foundation model fine-tuning or LLM evaluation experience
Experience establishing ML engineering practices in organisations transitioning from classical ML to deep learning
Interested? Find out more:
Wise Engineering – https://medium.com/wise-engineering
What do we offer:
Starting salary: £135,000 - £175,000 + RSUs
For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders — without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive.
We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences.
Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.
If you want to find out more about what it's like to work at Wise visit Wise.Jobs.
Keep up to date with life at Wise by following us on LinkedIn and Instagram.
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