Group Chief Risk & Compliance Officer

Group Chief Risk & Compliance Officer

About Bits of Gold:

Bits of Gold is Israel's pioneering crypto fintech company, founded over a decade ago, fully licensed by the Capital Market, Insurance and Savings Authority (CMISA), and one of the few crypto platforms in the region that has worked hand-in-hand with regulators since day one. Our mission is to accelerate the transition to crypto banking, by providing a seamless and secure experience - so every person and business can unlock their assets.

We are a team of 50+ people in Tel Aviv, Paris, and beyond, operating at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and rigorous financial regulation. As we expand into Europe through our MiCA licensing in France, we are deepening the infrastructure and leadership that will carry us into the next chapter of growth.

What has not changed, and will not change: our people. We are flat, direct, mission-driven, and deeply committed to the trust of our clients. When profit and client security are in tension, we choose trust, every time.

About the Role:

As our Chief Risk & Compliance Officer, you will be a full member of the executive management team, reporting directly to the CEO, and the group-level professional authority for risk, regulatory compliance, AML/CFT, and governance across Israel and France.

You will lead, own and elevate an existing, licensed, and functioning Risk & Compliance operation - taking it into its next stage of maturity as Bits of Gold expands in Europe and progresses through MiCA authorisation in France.

This is an executive operator role: you will set strategy, policy, risk appetite, and regulatory direction, while staying close enough to the work to challenge cases, controls, alerts, monitoring logic, remediation plans, and operational decisions.

You will inherit existing teams, tools, processes, and budget, with a mandate to assess and design the structure, governance, reporting, and systems required for the company’s next phase of growth.

Whether you come from a fintech, a regulated crypto platform, or a financial institution, what matters is that you have a proven track record, and you are ready to lead that ship further.

Location: Tel Aviv, Israel

Job Type: Hybrid

What You'll Own:

Compliance & Regulatory Relationships

• Serve as the primary point of contact for CMISA and other regulators, managing ongoing dialogue, examinations, and regulatory correspondence.
• Lead the post-submission MiCA/CASP authorisation workstream in France, including regulator Q&A, remediation, governance enhancements, operating-model readiness, and the post-authorisation compliance framework, working closely with the France GM, local MLRO, AMF/ACPR, and external advisors.
• Develop and maintain a compliance framework that meets the evolving expectations of Israeli and EU regulators, not as a checkbox exercise, but as a competitive advantage.
• Monitor regulatory developments in the digital asset space and translate them into timely, practical policy updates.
• Build and maintain trusted relationships with banking partners and financial institutions, demonstrating the governance and regulatory discipline that enables those relationships to function.

AML / CFT & Financial Crime Prevention

• Lead the AML/CFT program end-to-end: policies, procedures, risk assessments, transaction monitoring, and suspicious activity reporting.
• Ensure sanctions screening processes are robust, up to date, and aligned with Israeli and international requirements.
• Oversee KYC and customer due diligence frameworks, ensuring they are both rigorous and user-friendly at scale.
• Act as the company's senior responsible person for financial crime risk, working closely with your Fraud and Blockchain Analytics team.
• Manage regulatory audits and examinations; lead remediation efforts with clear ownership and timelines.
• Own Travel Rule compliance for crypto-asset transfers, including information requirements, counterparty VASP/CASP due diligence, self-hosted wallet risk treatment, exception handling, and operational integration into monitoring and case management.

Enterprise Risk Management

• Build and maintain a formal ERM framework covering operational, reputational, financial, and technology risks.
• Define the company's risk appetite, establish KRIs, and embed risk thinking into product, operations, and growth decisions.
• Establish clear escalation protocols and decision rights for material risk, compliance, AML/CFT, sanctions, operational resilience, and regulatory issues.
• Lead periodic risk assessments and present findings to senior leadership.
• Work with the CISO on cyber and information security risk.

Team Leadership & Operational Excellence

• Lead the Risk & Compliance team in Israel and serve as the group-level professional authority for Risk & Compliance across Israel and France.
• Provide professional leadership to the French compliance function, including the local MLRO and AML team, while working in partnership with the France GM, to ensure alignment with group policy, risk appetite, control standards, regulatory expectations, and escalation protocols.
• Assess and evolve the department’s structure, tooling, processes, and reporting model within the approved budget.
• Build a culture of compliance awareness across the company without becoming a bottleneck to velocity.

Executive & Board Partnership

• Report directly to the CEO as a member of Bits of Gold's management team.
• Build and maintain a Board-ready risk and compliance reporting framework, including key risks, KRIs, regulatory updates, remediation status, incidents, and decisions required from management or the Board.
• Present risk and compliance updates to relevant committees, as required by regulation and company policy.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to the CEO and executive team on risk-reward tradeoffs as we expand geographically and by product.
• Partner cross-functionally across the organization, embedding compliance and risk thinking into the day-to-day of every team.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 10-15+ years in risk management and/or compliance within regulated financial services, ideally with meaningful exposure to both disciplines, including at least 5 years in a senior leadership role.
• Proven experience as a regulator-facing accountable person, Chief Compliance Officer, Head of Compliance, Head of Risk, MLRO, or equivalent.
• Demonstrated experience with Israeli regulators , including direct regulatory engagement, examinations, audits, remediation, or formal correspondence.
• Deep hands-on AML/CFT expertise, including customer risk assessment, CDD/EDD, sanctions, transaction monitoring, suspicious activity reporting, regulatory audits, remediation, and governance.
• Strong understanding of operational resilience, risk frameworks, risk appetite, KRIs, operational risk, technology risk, third-party risk, incident escalation, and business continuity in a regulated financial environment.
• Experience designing risk or compliance frameworks for technology-driven financial operations; digital asset experience is a strong advantage.
• Technologically fluent; comfortable working with technical tools, use data, GRC platforms, and able to engage meaningfully with product and R&D teams.
• Strong executive communication: able to present to a Board, challenge management, negotiate with regulators, and translate complex requirements into practical operating decisions.
• Fluent Hebrew and English (French - an advantage).

Strong Advantage

• Prior experience as a Chief Compliance Officer or MLRO in a licensed financial institution with formal regulatory approval.
• Direct experience with MiCA, DORA, or other EU digital asset regulatory frameworks.
• Familiarity with blockchain-native risk concepts and analytics tools (e.g. Chainalysis, Elliptic), including wallet risk scoring, on-chain transaction analysis, and liquidity risk in crypto markets.
• Experience managing compliance across more than one regulatory environment simultaneously.

What We Offer

• A rare opportunity to join a market leader at an inflection point, right before a significant European expansion, with a real runway to shape how we grow.
• A central role in taking our French and European regulatory operating model from licensing execution to scalable, post-authorisation operations.
• Meaningful ownership of a critical function at a company that is still small enough to move fast, and large enough to matter.
• A role at the heart of Israel's digital asset industry, at a company that has been at the regulatory frontier since the beginning.
• A team that is flat, honest, and full of people who chose to be here for the mission, not the perks only.
• We are a profitable, bootstrap company, which means the people here are driven by mission, not by the next funding round.