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Trade Surveillance Analyst 1 — Financial Crimes Department at Alpaca · globalremotely

Who We Are:

Alpaca is a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer and brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Our recent Series D funding round brought our total investment to over $320 million, fueling our ambitious vision.

Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totalling over 9 million brokerage accounts.

Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We're deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award-winning, developer-friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.

Alpaca is proudly backed by top-tier global investors, including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Unbound, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members:

We're a dynamic team of 380+ globally distributed members who thrive working from our favorite places around the world, with teammates spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond!

We're searching for passionate individuals eager to contribute to Alpaca's rapid growth. If you align with our core values—Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable—and are ready to make a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.

Your Role:

Alpaca is seeking a Trade Surveillance Analyst to join the Financial Crimes Department and support the firm’s market-integrity, financial-crime, and compliance surveillance program. This role will be responsible for monitoring trading activity, reviewing alerts, investigating suspicious or potentially manipulative trading behavior, and escalating matters that may involve market abuse, fraud, insider trading, wash trading, spoofing, layering, front-running, information-barrier concerns, or other suspicious trading patterns.

The analyst will use Surveyor by Trillium and Alpaca’s internal systems to conduct near real-time and post-trade reviews, identify anomalies, document investigative findings, and support internal escalations, regulatory inquiries, and matters that may require suspicious-activity reporting. The role combines strong investigative judgment, trade-surveillance expertise, AML & Fraud awareness, and the ability to operate in a fast-paced, technology-driven trading environment.

Things You Get To Do:

Development, review, and test trade-surveillance scenarios, alert logic, escalation procedures, and control documentation
Make sure procedures and processes are well documented, and distributed to all stakeholders. Ensuring updates are properly accounted for as needed but no less than once per year
Monitor trading activity using Surveyor and Alpaca’s internal systems to identify potential market abuse, suspicious trading, unusual order behavior, and other conduct risks
Review and investigate trade-surveillance alerts involving potential spoofing, layering, wash trading, front-running, insider trading, manipulative order activity, information-barrier issues, or other suspicious trading patterns
Analyze trading activity in the context of market events, client behavior, account activity, transaction patterns, and relevant internal information to determine whether activity is reasonable, unusual, or suspicious
Conduct real-time and post-trade reviews to detect anomalies, assess risk, and determine whether escalation is appropriate
Clearly document surveillance reviews, investigative steps, evidence reviewed, rationale, conclusions, and recommended next actions
Escalate suspicious or high-risk matters to AML leadership, Compliance, Legal, Risk, and other appropriate internal stakeholders
Coordinate with the AML Department on trading-related investigations, including matters that may require suspicious-activity review or SAR consideration
Support KYC/AML and transaction-monitoring processes by identifying trading behavior that may indicate financial-crime risk, account misuse, fraud, market manipulation, or other suspicious activity
Respond to internal escalations involving trading activity, account behavior, customer activity, or potential violations of firm policy
Assist with regulatory inquiries, audit requests, internal reviews, and other examinations related to trade surveillance, AML, and market-integrity controls
Partner with Compliance, Legal, Risk, Technology, Operations, and business stakeholders to strengthen Alpaca’s surveillance framework and improve investigation workflows
Identify emerging surveillance risks, suspicious-trading typologies, control gaps, and opportunities to improve the quality and effectiveness of the trade-surveillance program
Prepare clear summaries, metrics, and management reporting related to trade-surveillance activity, alert trends, escalations, and investigation outcomes
Maintain strong knowledge of relevant market-abuse risks, AML red flags, trading behaviors, and regulatory expectations applicable to Alpaca’s business

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

5+ years of experience in Fintech trade surveillance, AML investigations, transaction monitoring, financial-crime compliance, brokerage compliance, market surveillance, risk, investigations, or a related control function
Experience working at a broker-dealer, fintech, trading platform, exchange, introducing broker, clearing firm, market maker, proprietary trading firm, crypto trading or other regulated financial institution
Strong understanding of trading activity, order behavior, market structure, customer activity, and potential indicators of market manipulation or suspicious activity
Familiarity with market-abuse typologies, including spoofing, layering, wash trading, front-running, insider trading, unusual price or volume activity, and manipulative order behavior
Ability to review trading data, identify behavioral patterns, investigate exceptions, and form well-supported conclusions
Experience documenting investigations in a clear, concise, and audit-ready manner
Strong analytical skills, sound judgment, attention to detail, and ability to prioritize multiple reviews or investigations
High integrity, discretion, and ability to handle confidential information appropriately
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex trading activity to AML, Compliance, Legal, Risk, Technology, and business stakeholders
Ability to work independently while collaborating across teams in a fast-paced environment
FINRA Series 7 license