Director, Quality Control — BSA/AML & Sanctions Operations

We are a hybrid, remote-office company with onsite locations in Sioux Falls, SD; Scottsdale, AZ; Louisville, KY; Troy, MI; Franklin, TN; and Easton, PA. Pathward is a financial empowerment company dedicated to creating financial inclusion for all™ by removing barriers to financial access and promoting economic mobility through responsible, secure, high-quality financial products.

About the Role

The Director, Quality Control owns Pathward’s first independent Quality Control (QC) function across BSA/AML & Sanctions Operations. Reporting directly to the SVP, Deputy BSA/AML Officer, this role ensures structural independence from production while setting the strategy, framework, and standards for QC. The Director leads a multi-tier team covering alerts, cases, complex investigations, merchant acquiring, and sanctions, designing the QC program, sampling methodology, and error taxonomy. Responsibilities include establishing calibration and effective-challenge disciplines, delivering QC results to governance forums, and supporting regulatory examinations—without assuming production disposition authority. As a people leader, the role also oversees the operating model, budget, talent development, and cross-functional engagement with Independent Testing, Second Line, and Internal Audit.

Responsibilities

• Own the QC strategy and operating model across all five review populations (alerts, cases, complex investigations, merchant acquiring, and sanctions), ensuring structural independence from production disposition authority.
• Design and govern the sampling methodology—risk-based and stratified by analyst and queue, with new-hire oversampling and defined statistical confidence levels—and approve periodic recalibration of sample plans.
• Define and maintain the error taxonomy (critical, significant, administrative) aligned to the OCC five-element documentation baseline, with escalation, root-cause, and re-work rules.
• Lead and develop the QC team—including a Manager/Lead and QC Analysts—setting goals, managing performance, and building bench strength and succession.
• Own the calibration program, running monthly calibration between QC, Leads, and Managers with documented outcomes and closure of disputed dispositions.
• Report QC results and thematic trends into BSA/AML governance and risk committees; provide effective-challenge follow-up and track remediation to completion.
• Finalize and operate to the Financial Crimes Compliance Independent Testing and Quality Assurance Program Document, and maintain the QC program document set within Doc Control.
• Coordinate read-only system access (Actimize, FCRM, Bridger) and maintain the QC results repository; ensure QC holds no production disposition rights.
• Interface with Independent Testing/QA, Second Line, and Internal Audit as a peer—supporting, but never replacing, their functions—and support regulatory examinations and audits with QC artifacts and findings.
• Own budget, resource, and technology planning for the QC function, including business cases for staffing, tooling, and automation of sampling and reporting.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree preferred.
• CAMS required; CFE, CFCS, or CRCM strongly preferred.
• 10+ years of BSA/AML experience, including quality assurance/quality control or independent testing.
• 5+ years of people leadership, including leading leaders and building or scaling a function.
• Demonstrated experience designing sampling methodologies and error taxonomies in a regulated environment.
• Depth across alert, case, complex-investigation, and sanctions-screening workflows, including SAR quality and the five-element documentation baseline.
• Experience presenting results and effective challenge to senior governance forums, and supporting regulatory examinations and audits.
• Strategic QC/QA design discipline, including statistically valid sampling, calibration, and root-cause analysis.
• Independence and objectivity; ability to challenge the production line constructively and defend methodology to examiners.
• Deep knowledge of the five-element documentation baseline and examiner expectations.
• Executive-level reporting of findings and thematic trends to governance forums.
• People leadership: talent development, performance management, and building an independent, high-integrity culture.
• Collaborative with second and third lines while preserving first-line QC scope.

Products & Services Knowledge

QC spans every review population, requiring the Director to possess working knowledge of Pathward’s product suite to calibrate reviewers and stratify samples effectively:

• Card Issuing / Prepaid: The dominant alert/case population; QC must test that narratives correctly reflect GPR, payroll, corporate, gift, and government-card constructs and source-of-funds designations.
• Acquiring (Merchant & ATM): A distinct QC population; reviews must confirm merchant/ISO and ATM typologies are properly analyzed.
• Tax Products: Seasonal refund-transfer and advance activity requiring product-aware sampling.
• Digital Payments & Faster Payments (Visa Direct / Mastercard Send): Push/pull disbursement dispositions.
• Sanctions (OFAC / 314(a) / PEP): Screening dispositions that clear with no other independent review, requiring product-aware error-taxonomy design.
• The Bank-vs-Program-Manager framework: Ensuring QC findings correctly attribute Bank vs. program-manager responsibilities in each disposition, including Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) partner activity.

Pay

Salary range: $86,000 – $145,000. The range reflects the minimum and maximum target for a new hire in this role. Individual pay within the range will be determined by factors including a candidate’s experience, qualifications, skills, and location. This role is also eligible for an annual performance-based incentive opportunity.

Benefits

Pathward offers a comprehensive benefits package for eligible employees, including:

• Health insurance
• 401(k) retirement benefits
• Life insurance
• Disability benefits
• Paid time off
• Additional benefits (not specified in detail)