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Head of Operations in a Crypto Company: Profile and Hiring Process

Head of Operations in a Crypto Company: Profile and Hiring Process

Hirexel Blog cover: Head of Operations in a Crypto Company: Profile and Hiring Process
Last updated: 11 November 2026

Key takeaways

  • A crypto head of operations covers onboarding, payments and wallets, client support, vendors and incident handling.
  • In a regulated firm, the role turns rules on client assets, complaints and outsourcing into daily procedures.
  • Look for regulated operations experience, the ability to write procedures and a good working relationship with compliance.
  • Interview with real scenarios: a frozen withdrawal, a failed vendor, a regulator information request.
  • MiCA and VARA both set operational rules, from safeguarding client assets to holding client money in a Client Account.
A head of operations crypto hire is often the person who decides whether the business feels reliable to clients. Deposits that arrive on time, withdrawals that are processed correctly, onboarding that does not stall, support that answers: all of that sits in operations. In a regulated crypto firm, the same person also makes sure those processes follow the rules on client assets, complaints and outsourcing.
This guide is for founders and COOs of crypto exchanges, brokers, custodians and payment firms. It covers the scope of the role, the profile that works, the rules the role applies and how to interview.

What the role covers

Area What operations owns Who it works with
Client onboarding Running the onboarding flow, queues, document checks within compliance rules Compliance, AML
Payments and wallets Deposits, withdrawals, wallet operations, reconciliations Finance, technology, custody providers
Client support Queries, complaints process, service levels Compliance (complaints oversight)
Vendor management Banks, payment providers, custody and analytics vendors, outsourced support Legal, procurement, compliance
Incident handling Frozen funds, failed transfers, outages, vendor failures Technology, security, compliance, management
The split with compliance matters. Operations runs the processes; compliance sets the rules and checks them. Internal audit then tests both. A head of operations who sees compliance as a partner, not a blocker, saves the firm time and findings.

The profile that works

Operations in a regulated environment. Experience running operations in a licensed firm: a payment institution, an EMI, a broker, a bank or a licensed crypto firm. Ask which regulator and which processes they ran.
Procedure writing. The ability to turn a rule into a clear procedure that a team can follow and an auditor can test. Ask for a redacted example. Good procedures name the owner, the steps, the records and the escalation path.
Working with compliance. A track record of agreeing processes with compliance and responding to findings.
Crypto operations knowledge. Wallet operations, on-chain transfers, confirmation times, network fees, custody arrangements. Useful, but easier to learn than the first three. For candidates from banks and traditional finance, see Hiring From TradFi Into Crypto: How to Assess Candidates.

The rules operations applies

MiCA. Article 70 requires CASPs that hold clients' crypto-assets or funds to protect clients' ownership rights and prevent the use of those assets for their own account, particularly in case of insolvency. Article 71 requires transparent and effective complaints-handling procedures, a complaints template for clients and records of all complaints and measures taken. Article 73 allows outsourcing under a written agreement and an outsourcing policy, but the CASP remains fully responsible to its clients. For the roles a MiCA firm needs, see Hiring for a MiCA Licence: Roles You Need Before You Apply.
VARA. VARA's Compliance and Risk Management Rulebook requires VASPs holding client money to hold it in a Client Account at a third-party bank, paid in within one calendar day of receipt, and requires client money held for clients in the UAE to be kept with banks in the UAE.
DORA. For CASPs authorised under MiCA, the Digital Operational Resilience Act has applied since 17 January 2025, which brings ICT incident management and third-party ICT risk into operations' daily work alongside technology.

Hiring a head of operations for a regulated crypto business?

Send us the job description and we will look for candidates who have run operations under a regulator, not only in a start-up.

Interview with real scenarios

Generic questions get generic answers. Use scenarios and ask for the first hour, the first day and the follow-up:
  • A frozen withdrawal. A large client's withdrawal is held by an on-chain analytics alert and the client is calling every hour. What do you do, who do you involve and what do you tell the client?
  • A failed vendor. Your main payment provider stops processing without notice on a Friday evening. How do you keep deposits and withdrawals running?
  • A regulator information request. The regulator asks for all complaints and their outcomes for the last six months, by Wednesday. Where does the data come from and who signs it off?
  • An onboarding spike. Sign-ups triple after a market move. How do you keep onboarding quality and service levels?
  • An outage. The platform is down for two hours during peak trading. What happens during and after?
Strong candidates name people, systems, records and decisions. They escalate to compliance and management at the right time, communicate clearly with clients, and write up what happened. Weak candidates describe what "the team" would do.

Head of operations crypto: red flags

  • Only unregulated experience. Ran operations fast, but never under a regulator or audit.
  • No written procedures. Relies on people knowing what to do.
  • Sees compliance as an obstacle. Talks about "getting compliance to approve" rather than designing processes together.
  • No incident examples. Cannot describe a real incident they handled and what changed afterwards.

The first 90 days and how to measure the role

Agree the first 90 days before the start date. A practical plan:
  • Month one: map. Every operational process end to end, who owns it, where it is written down and where it breaks. Meet the main vendors, banks and custody providers.
  • Month two: fix. The two or three processes that cause the most client complaints or manual work, with procedures agreed with compliance.
  • Month three: measure. A short set of operational indicators reported to management every month.
Useful indicators include deposit and withdrawal processing times, onboarding queue time, the number and age of open complaints, reconciliation breaks, incidents and their resolution time, and vendor service levels. Choose the ones that matter for your business and agree the definitions with finance and compliance, so the numbers mean the same thing to everyone.
A head of operations who builds these indicators early gives management, auditors and the regulator a clear view of how the business runs.

Payments and fraud overlap

Operations and payments risk overlap in withdrawals, chargebacks and suspicious payment patterns. Decide early who owns fraud rules and who owns the operational response. For the risk role, see How to Hire a Fraud and Payments Risk Manager for a Fintech.

What we recommend

  1. Define the scope: which of onboarding, payments, support, vendors and incidents the role owns.
  2. Prioritise regulated operations experience and procedure writing over crypto-only experience.
  3. Interview with at least three real scenarios from your own business.
  4. Agree the split with compliance and payments risk before the person starts.
  5. Ask for a redacted procedure the candidate wrote, and references from compliance colleagues.

FAQ

What does a head of operations do in a crypto company?

A crypto head of operations usually covers client onboarding, payments and wallets, client support, vendor management and incident handling. In a regulated firm the role also turns regulatory requirements, such as safeguarding of client assets and complaints handling, into daily procedures.

What profile should a crypto head of operations have?

Look for someone who has run operations in a regulated environment, can write clear procedures, and works well with compliance. Experience with crypto payments and wallets helps, but the ability to build controlled processes and handle incidents calmly matters most.

What rules affect crypto operations?

It depends on the regulator. Under MiCA, CASPs must protect clients' ownership rights over crypto-assets and funds (Article 70), run effective complaints-handling procedures (Article 71) and remain fully responsible when they outsource (Article 73). VARA requires VASPs holding client money to hold it in a Client Account, paid in within one calendar day of receipt.

How should I interview a crypto head of operations?

Use real scenarios: a frozen withdrawal, a failed vendor, a regulator information request, a spike in onboarding volume. Ask the candidate to walk through the first hour, the first day and the follow-up, including who they involve and what they document.

Should operations report to the CEO or the COO?

In early-stage firms the head of operations often reports to the CEO or is the COO. As the firm grows, a COO usually owns operations, technology and sometimes finance. What matters more is a clear split between operations, which runs the processes, and compliance, which oversees them.

Can a crypto firm outsource operations?

Parts of operations, such as support or some onboarding checks, can be outsourced, but regulated firms stay responsible. Under MiCA Article 73, outsourcing needs a written agreement and policy, and the CASP remains fully responsible to its clients.

The bottom line

The right head of operations crypto hire runs reliable processes under real rules, writes them down, works with compliance and stays calm in an incident. Test that with scenarios, not with a CV. Hirexel recruits heads of operations, payment operations and support leads for crypto, blockchain and fintech companies.

Need someone to run your crypto operations?

Book a call to define the scope of the role and the scenarios to test.

Sources

  1. ESMA, MiCA interactive single rulebook, Article 70 (Safekeeping of clients' crypto-assets and funds): https://www.esma.europa.eu/publications-and-data/interactive-single-rulebook/mica/article-70-safekeeping-clients-crypto-assets
  2. ESMA, MiCA interactive single rulebook, Article 71 (Complaints-handling procedures): https://www.esma.europa.eu/publications-and-data/interactive-single-rulebook/mica/article-71-complaints-handling-procedures
  3. ESMA, MiCA interactive single rulebook, Article 73 (Outsourcing): https://www.esma.europa.eu/publications-and-data/interactive-single-rulebook/mica/article-73-outsourcing
  4. VARA, Compliance and Risk Management Rulebook (19 May 2025): https://rulebooks.vara.ae/sites/default/files/en_net_file_store/VARA_EN_123_VER20250519.pdf
  5. Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 (DORA): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/2554/oj

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