Head of Compliance & Bank Partnerships

About Tensec

Tensec builds AI specifically for cross-border trade, helping the companies that coordinate international shipping manage both money and goods for their importer and exporter clients. Today, these companies, including freight forwarders, shipping lines, and customs brokers, rely on software designed for large corporations and extensive manual work. Tensec brings AI into their daily operations to automate that work: currency exchange and international payments today, freight quoting and booking next, and trade finance to follow.

Cross-border business trade is a $50 trillion market. Our ambition is to make Tensec the platform of choice for companies that keep global trade moving. We launched in the US, Mexico, and Brazil and are expanding globally. We are onboarding enterprise customers that handle billions of dollars in annual trade across major international routes.

Founded in 2023, Tensec is led by a team whose experience includes building and selling startups and leading global teams at Meta, PayPal, Credit Karma, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. Our investors include Quiet Capital, Costanoa Ventures, Renegade Partners, Coinbase Ventures, Clocktower, and WillowTree.

Your mission

Our ability to grow in Brazil depends on the confidence of our banking partners and the quality of our compliance work. Your role will be to build the compliance function and banking relationships behind Tensec's growth in Brazil. You've earned a bank's trust before, and you know how to get things done inside a fintech. Here, you bring both together.

You'll work directly with our COO in New York and partner with a dedicated tech enablement team to turn your ideas for better compliance into working tools. The role is hands-on: your team handles compliance escalations on live transactions, while you set the standard, review their work, and take every high-tier escalation yourself.

Outcomes: your first 12–18 months

• Own Brazil's compliance program end to end. KYB/KYC onboarding, AML/CFT monitoring, BCB/BACEN reporting, and COAF obligations all run to a standard you set, with your review behind every escalated call.

• Become the counterpart Brazilian banks trust. Manage the day-to-day relationships, renegotiate fees, restricted activity lists, and service levels as volume grows, and land at least one new banking relationship that expands what Tensec can do.

• Ship the first real improvement to compliance tooling. Work with Tech Enablement, Product, and Engineering to automate a piece of review, reporting, or partner-response work that's still manual today.

• Keep Tensec audit-ready at all times. Controls, records, and documentation hold up under a real regulatory exam or partner audit: no scramble when one lands.

• Shape how Tensec expands in Brazil. Flag regulatory changes, licensing openings, and tax shifts that affect the business before they turn into deadlines.

Also on your plate

• Track developments in the BCB Resolution 277 framework and other frameworks applicable to virtual assets, translating changes into practical requirements.

• Own local LGPD compliance and monitor Brazil's AI regulatory framework as it evolves.

• Coordinate with compliance colleagues in the US and Mexico so the group program stays aligned while Brazil's local requirements are met.

• Handle the reporting, documentation, and due diligence Brazil owes to financial partners in the US, Europe, and Asia: colleagues elsewhere own those relationships; you make sure Brazil holds up its end.

• Develop your direct report and build the processes a growing compliance team will need.

What you bring

• Law degree (bacharel em Direito); OAB registration preferred. You'll use it for direct access to court litigation databases essential for compliance screening, not to practice law. Legal matters are handled by our General Counsel and local counsel.

• Hands-on Brazilian compliance experience: you've personally run KYB, filed BCB/BACEN reports, handled COAF obligations, and worked through an audit or exam. Bank-side or fintech-side, either path works.

• Fluency in the BCB/BACEN framework, AML/CFT rules, and licensing requirements for payments and FX.

• Real credibility with banking partners: you've run several relationships at once, worked through hard issues, and have counterparts who trust you.

• Judgment to know what to decide yourself and what to escalate.

• A systems mindset: you notice repetitive work and can turn it into clear requirements for vendors and engineers.

• Fluent English. You'll use it daily with the COO in New York and international partners.

How you work

• You do the work, not just set the strategy: reviewing real transactions and handling real escalations, not only building process from a distance.

• You don't need to write code, but you're curious enough to tell a technical team exactly what a good tool should do.

• You know what to decide on your own and when to bring in the COO.

• You represent Tensec directly with regulators and banks. No one else needs to vouch for you in the room.

Nice to have

• Experience building a compliance function at a startup from scratch.

• Background in cross-border payments or FX.

• A track record negotiating banking terms.

• Hands-on experience standing up compliance technology.

• LGPD experience specific to financial services.

• Existing relationships with Brazilian regulators or senior banking executives.

Compensation & benefits

• Competitive base salary and equity participation

• Vale-refeição/alimentação (meal/food voucher)

• Plano de saúde (health insurance)

• Paid time off and local statutory holidays

• Learning and development budget