The best candidate has the following profile shape. Few people will be perfect on all five; we are willing to accept gaps on technical compliance background if everything else is strong, because that piece is learnable and we will pair the hire with Manuel and Charlene during ramp.
1. Editorial chops at a publication-grade standard.
Have edited or led content at a B2B SaaS, fintech, or trade publication where copy quality was a competitive moat (Stripe, Linear, Vanta, Ramp, Wise, MoneyLion, FT Sifted, The Information, Sifted, The Block, CoinDesk Indices, similar). They can spot AI-generated mush from twenty feet, and they can rewrite it into something a senior MLRO would actually quote.
2. Search-data fluency.
You can pull and read GSC like a dashboard. They know the difference between an impression and a click and a position-8 striking-distance keyword. They have used Ahrefs or Semrush as a daily tool, not as a once-a-quarter audit. They have run a content-gap analysis against named competitors and acted on the output. If they do not know what "GEO" or "AEO" means as a discipline today, they have at least been reading carefully about AI Overviews and have an opinion on how it changes content strategy.
3. AI-tooling fluency without AI-tooling worship.
Use Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini as a daily drafting tool already. They have opinions on which model writes better for which use case. They have tried MCP, plugins, custom GPTs, or similar. They are not afraid of AI replacing them; they are afraid of editors who do not use AI getting replaced. At the same time, they have strong taste about when AI output is good enough and when it is not, and they are willing to scrap a draft that scores 90/100 on rubric but reads hollow.
4. Domain-aligned, or aggressively domain-curious.
Have worked in regtech, fintech, identity/KYC, compliance tech, AML tooling, or adjacent verticals (banking-as-a-service, crypto compliance, payment infrastructure). OR they have demonstrated that they can ramp into a technical domain in 3-6 weeks and write at depth. Operator-grade content for a compliance audience cannot be faked.
Write like a founder, not like a marketer. Short sentences. Specific claims. Evenhanded analysis. No buzzwords. No "in today's rapidly evolving landscape" openers. We can teach the technical content; we cannot teach taste.
Soft skills that separate good from great
The hard skills above are what gets a candidate to the final round. These soft skills are what separates the offer from the rest.
Editorial conviction without ego.
They have opinions about content and they hold them firmly, but they update when the data contradicts the opinion. A SERP that consistently rewards a different structure than the one they prefer should move them, not annoy them.
Comfortable working with the founder.
Most of the strategic content decisions at Zyphe go through Michelangelo (the CEO) and Charlene (the CRO). This person will work alongside both, contributing to direction not just executing on it. They need to be comfortable pushing back when the founder is wrong, and comfortable taking direction when the founder is right. No diplomatic dance.
High agency and ambiguity tolerance.
The role does not come with a 12-month editorial calendar handed down from a marketing director. It comes with the cluster as it stands today (~50 pieces), the GSC and Ahrefs data once connected, and the implicit pressure to compound those into ranked, cited, demo-converting content. Someone who needs a fully scoped brief to do their best work will be miserable in this role.
Curiosity for compliance specifically.
Genuinely find AML, KYC, MiCA, FCA SMCR, AMLA, FATF Recommendations interesting. Or they pretend convincingly enough that prospects believe them. This is a regulated-industry company; the content has to read like it understands the regulator.
Ruthless prioritisation.
Be tempted to "refresh" old blog posts that nobody reads. They will be tempted to write thought-leadership pieces because thought-leadership feels good. The discipline is to keep saying "what does this piece do for demo conversion or for AI citation in our target queries?" and to kill projects that do not answer cleanly.
Honesty over polish.
They tell the team when a piece is bad before publishing it, not after. They tell the founder when a campaign idea is wrong, not after the campaign runs. They tell themselves when their own draft is not working.
Stretch criteria (nice to have, not required)
* Prior experience writing for regulated audiences (auditors, MLROs, compliance officers, lawyers).
* Prior experience with a compliance product launch or repositioning.
* Working knowledge of structured data and schema (JSON-LD, Schema.org, OpenGraph) at the spec level.
* A public portfolio (LinkedIn newsletter, Substack, personal blog, contributions to fintech publications) where you can hold a voice across 6+ months of output.
* Working knowledge of an MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Continue, ChatGPT custom GPTs) for daily research and drafting.
* Familiarity with Reddit, Hacker News, and the niche forums where compliance professionals actually talk (r/fintech, r/cybersecurity, r/CompliantCrypto, FATF working-group transcripts, ICO consultation responses).
* Italian, German, or French language ability for cross-market content work.
What the role owns in the first six months
Month 1, audit and instrumentation.
* Wire up Google Search Console, GA4, HubSpot, and Ahrefs (the latter via the MCP we just shipped to the workflow) so every brief is informed by real data, not assumptions.
* Audit the existing ~50-piece cluster against the Zyphe content skill (em-dashes, schema completeness, key highlights, canonical URLs, og:image). Generate a remediation list ranked by impact.
* Identify the 5-10 pieces that are positioned to break onto page 1 of Google or into AI Overviews with a moderate refresh.
Month 2-3, refresh and remediate.
* Execute the remediation list. Refresh the 5-10 striking-distance pieces. Standardise schema and metadata across the cluster.
* Set up AI-citation baseline monitoring (Ahrefs Brand Radar) and start tracking which competitor pages get cited for our target queries.
* Establish the weekly content-and-search briefing format with Michelangelo and Charlene.
Month 4-6, new content production at velocity.
* Ship 6-8 new high-leverage pieces per quarter, briefed from real GSC and Ahrefs data, edited to the Zyphe skill standard, mirrored in LinkedIn posts (Michelangelo and Charlene voices).
* Build the "Zyphe vs [competitor]" comparison cluster (Sumsub, Onfido, Persona, Veriff, Jumio) — these are the highest-intent procurement queries we are currently underweight on.
* Stand up the AI-citation reporting cadence so we know quarter-over-quarter whether we are gaining or losing ground in Claude / ChatGPT / Perplexity answers.
* Begin hiring decisions: do we add a junior content producer, a designer, or a freelance editor pool? Recommend the structure that fits the workload.
What we offer
* Founding content team seat.You are the first dedicated content hire at Zyphe. The cluster you inherit was built fast and well. The path from here to "category-defining content brand in privacy-first KYC" runs through whoever takes this seat.
* Direct line to the CEO and CRO.No content-marketing-director chain of approvals. The two people who decide the company strategy are the two people who read your drafts. Decisions made fast; quality bar set high.
* Real tooling budget.Ahrefs, Supermetrics, Similarweb, AirOps, an AI-citation monitor of your choice, Claude / ChatGPT / Cursor / Continue at the highest plan tier. We do not penny-pinch the data layer.
* The Zyphe content skill as a starting point.You inherit a fully documented editorial standard (the SKILL.md generated this quarter) so you do not have to invent the conventions from scratch. You will improve it within weeks of joining.
* Cap table participationat the level appropriate for a senior individual contributor with leadership trajectory.
* Hybrid Lugano or remote within CET ±3 hours.Quarterly on-site weeks. We pay for the travel.
What we do not offer
* Generic "content marketing" career framing. If you want to be a CMO in three years, this role is not the fast lane to that title. It is the fast lane to "head of search and AI visibility for a compliance company that wins in the AI era".
* Hand-holding through ramp. We will support you, but we expect a senior hire to find their feet within 6-8 weeks.
* Excuses about scope. The cluster does not have an editorial calendar handed down from a parent company. You build the calendar. You build the strategy. You build the team if and when the work justifies it.
How to apply
Apply here: https://www.zyphe.com/careers/head-of-content-geo-86q163
Why Zyphe is the right place to do this work
Zyphe is the privacy-first KYC platform built around decentralised PII storage, NFC chip read, two-step liveness, and an audit trail that satisfies AMLA per-decision defensibility. We just shipped native Model Context Protocol support so compliance teams can operate the platform through their AI assistant. We are growing fast in the EU, UK, and US compliance markets, and the next year is when category leadership in the AI era gets decided.
The content that this person produces will be cited by Claude and ChatGPT and Perplexity when buyers ask the procurement questions that decide whether a fintech standardises on Zyphe or on a centralised competitor. The stakes are visible. The tools are in place. The standard is set.
We are looking for the person who steps into that.
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