CASE STUDY
Building a Regulated Entity from the Ground Up Inside a Fast-Moving Crypto Infrastructure Firm
A Series B digital assets firm preparing for a US federal banking licence application needed to hire seventeen specialists across compliance, technology, and risk within six months. Their internal team of two could not move fast enough alone.
*All client engagements are conducted under strict NDA. Client details are anonymised.
The Situation
A New York-based crypto infrastructure firm providing institutional-grade custody and settlement services had closed a $75 million Series B and was twelve months into a federal banking licence application with the OCC. The timeline was accelerating. Their regulatory counsel had advised that the OCC examination team would expect to see a materially stronger compliance and risk function in place before the next review. At the same time the CTO was under pressure to modernise the core platform infrastructure ahead of the licence being granted, creating a parallel technology hiring programme that the existing People team of two was completely unable to service at the required pace and quality. A generalist recruitment agency had been engaged for three months and had produced a handful of unsuitable candidates. The board approved an embedded talent solution as the most efficient path to building the team at the speed the licence timeline demanded.
The Challenge
The hiring programme spanned three distinct functions with very different candidate profiles. On the compliance and risk side the firm needed a Head of BSA, a Deputy MLRO, two AML analysts with crypto transaction monitoring experience, a sanctions specialist, and a model risk officer. On the technology side the CTO needed a Head of Platform Engineering, two blockchain infrastructure engineers, a security architect, and a senior DevSecOps engineer. Across the product function the CPO needed a Head of Product for the institutional custody platform and two senior product managers. Each function had different hiring urgency, different candidate markets, and different assessment requirements. Coordinating that across three external agencies would have created management overhead the leadership team could not absorb. A single embedded partner who could operate across all three workstreams simultaneously was the only model that made operational sense.
The Approach
Valmont deployed a senior embedded talent lead with direct financial markets and digital assets hiring experience into the business within one week of engagement. She operated inside the firm's ATS, attended weekly leadership team meetings, built direct relationships with each functional hiring manager, and took full ownership of the candidate pipeline across all three functions.
The first priority was the compliance and risk function given the OCC timeline. Valmont built a targeted candidate map across BSA and AML professionals with specific crypto or digital assets exposure, a pool that was significantly smaller than comparable roles in traditional financial services and required a proactive approach to passive candidates rather than reliance on applications. The technology and product workstreams ran in parallel, with Valmont leveraging its network of financial technology engineers and product leaders who had operated within regulated environments.
Weekly hiring dashboards were shared with the CEO and COO covering pipeline status, interview conversion rates, offer progress, and any emerging market intelligence on candidate availability or compensation expectations. Where the brief needed to be adjusted based on real market feedback, those conversations happened within days rather than weeks
The Outcome
All seventeen roles across compliance, technology, and product were filled within fourteen weeks of Valmont's engagement beginning. The Head of BSA and Deputy MLRO were both in post before the next OCC review, which the firm's regulatory counsel described as a materially positive factor in the examiner's assessment of the compliance programme's trajectory. The speed and quality of delivery across three simultaneous functions was something the leadership team had not believed was achievable when the engagement began. The internal People team retained all candidate pipeline data, hiring manager relationship context, and compensation benchmarking intelligence at the end of the engagement, providing a foundation for future hiring cycles without starting from scratch.
In Numbers
17
Roles across 3 functions
14
Week to fill all roles
1
Embedded Valmont Practitioner
0
Agency coordination overhead for the leadership team
OCC
Review assessment materially strengthened
A few words
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