Senior Transaction Monitoring Framework Specialist at : Hybrid Lisbon

About Pleo

Messy spend management is tricky business. And tedious processes are a lose-lose situation for all involved, not just finance. At Pleo, we're changing that. We build spend solutions that make managing money seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike - with a vision to help all businesses ‘go beyond’.

The word ‘Pleo’ actually means ‘more than you’d expect’, and living by that mantra has been the secret to our success over the last 10 years.

Now, we’re at a pivotal moment in our journey; every move we make has a direct impact on our 40,000+ customers, our business, and our collective success. We need people who take pride in uncovering customer needs, who turn complex problems into simple solutions, challenge the way things are done (respectfully), and always aim high. With great ambitions driving us forward, we can’t say we’ve got this whole thing figured out.

And frankly, that’s half the fun! What we can say is that we’re a driven, progressive, and, importantly, a kind bunch of 850+ people from over 100 nationalities, all committed to delivering the future of business spending, together.

We're looking for a Senior Transaction Monitoring Framework Specialist to join our Framework & Innovation team at Pleo, operating as the first line of defence (1

LoD) in our financial crime prevention strategy. In this role, you'll be the architect of our transaction surveillance approach, with a clear focus on leading innovation and embedding AI into how we detect, investigate, and prevent financial crime at scale.

This isn't a purely reactive role. You'll run cross-functional projects that bring together Financial Crime Operations, Engineering, 2

LoD (Second Line of Defence), and leadership to design controls and processes that scale. You'll translate emerging threats and regulatory expectations into practical, automated, and measurable interventions—including the thoughtful use of AI tools to improve decision quality, reduce manual effort, and strengthen governance. If you're excited about building the next generation of financial crime defences and are passionate about combining operational rigour with innovative technology, then this is the opportunity for you.

You'll report to the Head of Framework & Innovation and work closely with teams across Financial Crime Operations, Engineering, Product, Data, and our Second Line of Defence (2

LoD). Our team is highly collaborative and dedicated to keeping Pleo safe while enabling our customers to transact freely. You'll also have the chance to partner with teams across Risk, Compliance, and Legal to ensure our frameworks meet regulatory expectations and evolve with the threat landscape.

As a Senior Transaction Monitoring Framework Specialist, you will:

• Lead innovation in transaction monitoring – Identify high-impact opportunities for automation, model and rule optimisation, and AI-assisted investigation workflows that reduce false positives and improve detection of complex typologies.
• Run end-to-end change and delivery projects – Own discovery through to rollout and monitoring (discovery → design → build → rollout → monitoring), coordinating stakeholders across 1
  
  LoD, 2
  
  LoD, Operations, Product, and Engineering to deliver meaningful impact.
• Design and maintain our financial crime frameworks – Build and evolve robust transaction monitoring controls and procedures, ensuring they remain effective as our products, customer base, and threat landscape change.
• Partner with Engineering on surveillance systems – Work collaboratively on the development, deployment, and lifecycle management of transaction surveillance rules and models, including performance monitoring, drift detection, and continuous tuning.
• Integrate AI responsibly into processes – Improve alert triage and case prioritisation, enhance investigation quality and consistency, accelerate root cause analysis and emerging-risk discovery, and strengthen documentation and audibility.
• Turn insights into improvements – Analyse transaction alert data to reduce false positives, close control gaps, and…