Global Head of Sanctions

About Nu

Nu serves more than 140 million customers, guided by a mission to fight complexity and empower people. The company has been leading an industry transformation through innovative products and human-centered services.

 

Proprietary technology and data at scale power Nu’s digital platform, built to promote financial access, advancement, and transparency. Its business model thrives on customer love and lower costs, feeding a flywheel of growth and profitability.

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Role Summary

The Global Head of Sanctions owns the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of Nubank's global sanctions compliance program across every market the company serves or plans to enter. This includes compliance with U.S. sanctions administered by OFAC, as well as EU, UN, UK OFSI, and other applicable regimes. Based in Tysons, VA — close to Washington, D.C.— this leader is Nubank's principal voice on sanctions matters with U.S. regulators and acts as the central point of accountability for sanctions risk as the company expands beyond Latin America. The role combines deep technical sanctions expertise with the people leadership and stakeholder management needed to run a program across multiple countries, languages, and regulatory regimes.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, own, and continuously enhance Nubank's global sanctions policy framework, ensuring alignment with OFAC, EU, UN, and other relevant sanctions regimes across all current and future markets.

• Direct the end-to-end sanctions screening program, including customer (onboarding and ongoing) screening, transaction and payments screening, and the systems, vendors, and models that power them.

• Oversee watchlist and reference data management, including list ingestion, update cadence, and screening logic tuning to balance detection effectiveness against false-positive rates.

• Lead investigation and escalation of potential and true sanctions hits, including disposition decisions, blocked and rejected transaction handling, and required regulatory filings and reporting.

• Serve as Nubank's primary interface with OFAC, Treasury, and other regulators on sanctions matters, including managing examinations, inquiries, and voluntary self-disclosures where applicable.

• Advise business, product, and partnerships teams on sanctions risk in new products, markets, customer segments, and third-party relationships before launch.

• Monitor geopolitical and regulatory developments and translate them into timely program updates.

• Coordinate independent testing, internal audit, and regulatory examinations of the sanctions program, and drive remediation of identified gaps.

• Own sanctions training and awareness programs for employees, contractors, and relevant third parties across the organization.

Qualifications

Required Professional Experience & Education:

• 10+ years of progressive experience in sanctions compliance or broader financial crimes compliance within financial services.

• Deep, current knowledge of OFAC regulations and sanctions programs, with working familiarity with EU, UN, and UK OFSI regimes.

• Experience building, scaling, or materially uplifting a sanctions program in a high-growth, regulated, or fintech environment.

• Demonstrated people leadership, including managing distributed or multi-country teams.

• Strong track record of stakeholder management with regulators, executives, and the Board.

• Bachelor's degree required.

• Willingness to be based in or relocate to Virginia with periodic travel to Brazil and other Latin American offices.

Prefered Professional Experience:

• Experience at a global or multi-jurisdictional bank, payments company, or fintech operating across multiple regulatory regimes.

• CAMS or equivalent financial crimes compliance certification.

• Direct experience managing OFAC examinations, voluntary self-disclosures, or sanctions-related enforcement matters.

• Familiarity with sanctions screening technology vendors and model tuning/validation practices.

Our recruitment process may involve the use of artificial intelligence–enabled tools, such as automated interview transcription and analysis, to support the evaluation process. Artificial intelligence is not used to make final hiring decisions; all decisions are made by human reviewers.

To maintain a consistent and fair process for every candidate, Nu does not provide individualized technical feedback. See how our policy works here