Compliance Officer jobs: skills, pay and how to get hired

What a compliance officer does

A compliance officer reads the rules a firm must keep, turns them into policies and controls, checks that the business follows them and reports where it does not. In banks, insurers, payment firms and fund managers the largest part is financial crime: knowing the clients, screening them against sanctions lists, watching payments for signs of money laundering and reporting suspicions to the authorities. In other industries the same role covers bribery, competition rules, export controls and the company's code of conduct.

The job sits between the business and the supervisor. It is a second line role: the business owns its risks, compliance sets the standard and checks it, and internal audit, the third line, checks both. The neighbours are close: the lawyer reads what a rule means, the auditor tests whether the figures and controls hold, and the risk manager measures what could go wrong across the firm. The steps from analyst to chief compliance officer are in the career paths of this role.

The skills the ads ask for

We read a sample of the ads every day and count the skills they name. On a computer, hover a skill in the text to see its share; on a phone, the table has the same figures.

The craft comes first: general complianceTurn laws and supervisors' rules into duties, owners and controls, and show with evidence that they are met. work, anti-money launderingKnow how money is laundered and terrorism financed, and the controls a firm must run against both. and KYCIdentify clients and their owners, understand their business and keep the file current as the risk changes. reviews, sanctions screeningScreen clients and payments against official lists, judge possible matches and stop what must be stopped. and transaction monitoringRules and scenarios that flag unusual payments, alerts worked fairly and quickly, and tuning that is recorded.. Then the method that holds it together: risk managementRate compliance risks by how likely and how serious they are, and link each to its controls. to decide where to look first, internal controlsControls with a clear owner, a test that proves they work and a fix when they do not. that can be tested, care with personal data under the EU's GDPRPersonal data in compliance work: a lawful reason, short retention and care with screening and case files. and regulatory reportingReports and notices supervisors ask for, complete and on time, with the figures traced to their source. that reaches the supervisor on time.

The tools are plain: ExcelTrack findings, sample files and summarise alerts in workbooks a reviewer can follow step by step. for samples and findings, data analysisRead large sets of alerts, clients or payments, and see the pattern behind the numbers. of alerts and client files, sometimes SQLPull client and payment data yourself to test a control or check whether a monitoring rule works. to pull the data yourself. The personal skills carry the most weight in interviews: clear communicationExplain a rule in plain words, say no without losing people, and write findings they act on. with people who would rather hear yes, and an independent viewForm your own view under pressure from the business, and keep files no one has to chase. under pressure. EnglishThe language of international rules, group policies and most cross-border cases. is the language of most group policies, and GermanAsked for in most ads in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where clients, staff and supervisors write in German. is asked for in most ads in German-speaking countries.

Where the jobs are, country by country

Each country below has its own figures: which cities have the most jobs in our list, whether the number is going up or down, how often ads offer remote or hybrid work, the titles used in the country, and pay ranges from published research, in the local currency.

Regulators, rules and certificates

The rules differ by place, and each country section names its own. In the EU, the EU's anti-money laundering directives and a new EU regulation set common duties, and AMLA, the EU's anti-money laundering authority in Frankfurt, is to supervise some large cross-border firms directly. Germany adds BaFin, the German supervisor, and the German Money Laundering Act; Switzerland has FINMA, the Swiss supervisor; the UK has the FCA, the UK conduct regulator; the US has the Bank Secrecy Act, the SEC, FINRA and the OCC; India has the RBI and SEBI, India's central bank and markets regulator.

Behind the national rules stand the FATF recommendations, the international standard against money laundering that countries are assessed on. This page explains these rules in plain words; it is not legal or regulatory advice. The firm's lawyers, its compliance function and the supervisor of each country decide what applies.

Certificates are optional in most countries and are named here side by side: CAMS from ACAMS, an international association for anti-money laundering specialists, and the certificates and diplomas of the ICA, the International Compliance Association. Some ads name one of them; most ask for files you reviewed, controls you tested and cases you handled.

Your CV for a compliance officer job

A compliance CV is read twice: by hiring software that matches the ad's words, and by a head of compliance who wants to know which rules you worked under, which risks you handled and what you changed. Give both: the keywords and the proof.

Use the keywords the ads use

• Name the work as the ad does: "KYC", "AML", "sanctions screening", "transaction monitoring", "compliance monitoring", "policies", "training". The skills table above shows which keywords the ads use most.
• Say under which rules and for which business: retail or corporate clients, payments, funds or insurance, one country or several.
• Write a certificate or course you are still taking as "in progress" with the planned month, next to the work it supports.
• Name the supervisors you prepared for, such as an inspection or a regulator's questionnaire, without naming the firm's confidential findings.

Prove each skill

A compliance line proves itself with a risk that went down, a backlog that was cleared, a control that now works, or a finding that never came back: what you did, for how much of the business, and what changed.

Keep client names, case details and suspicious activity reports out of your CV: they are confidential, and saying how many and what kind is enough.

How we read our data

• The jobs: the compliance officer jobs in our job search (compliance officer and manager, AML officer, KYC analyst, financial crime, and the German titles Compliance-Beauftragter and Geldwäschebeauftragter), matched by their titles the way the search matches them. Our list is not the whole market, so we give shares and rankings, never counts.
• The skills: every day we read a sample of these ads and count the skills in them with a fixed word list. Only the counts are kept, never the text of an ad.
• Pay: from published salary research, each source named with its date, as a range from entry level to senior. Our ads are not used for it.
• Dates: every figure is worked out again each day and shows the day it was worked out.

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