Director, Financial Crime Risk Ops

About Airwallex

Airwallex is the only unified payments and financial platform for global businesses. Powered by our unique combination of proprietary infrastructure and software we empower over 200000 businesses worldwide including Brex Rippling Navan Qantas SHEIN and many more with fully integrated solutions to manage everything from business accounts payments spend management and treasury to embedded finance at a global scale.

Proudly founded in Melbourne we have a team of over 2000 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 26 offices around the globe. Valued at US$8 billion and backed by world-leading investors including T. Rowe Price Visa Mastercard Robinhood Ventures Sequoia Salesforce Ventures DST Global and Lone Pine Capital Airwallex is leading the charge in building the global payments and financial platform of the future. If youre ready to do the most ambitious work of your career join us.

Attributes We Value

We hire successful builders with founder-like energy who want real impact accelerated learning and true ownership. You bring strong role-related expertise and sharp thinking and youre motivated by our mission and operating principles. You move fast with good judgment dig deep with curiosity and make decisions from first principles balancing speed and rigor.

Youre humble and collaborative; turn zerotoone ideas into real products and you get stuff done end-to-end. You use AI to work smarter and solve problems faster. Here youll tackle complex highvisibility problems with exceptional teammates and grow your career as we build the future of global banking. If that sounds like you lets build whats next.

About the team

Global FCC and Risk Operations at Airwallex is a first-line-of-defence function that runs financial crime and risk operations globally. The org is led by the Head of Global FCC and Risk Operations and spans five pillars: Financial Crime Risk Ops Risk Operations (Payments) Risk Operations (Cards) Card Credit Risk Ops and Risk Strategy & AI Enablement.

This role leads the Financial Crime Risk Operations pillar the largest team in the org and sits alongside the other pillar leads as a peer. You will partner closely with 2LOD Financial Crime Compliance (including the MLRO function) Regulatory & Compliance Legal Risk Product and Engineering and Commercial leaders across our key markets.

What youll do

As Director Financial Crime Risk Operations you will own and scale our firstline financial crime risk operations globally.

You will:

• Lead the Financial Crime Risk Operations organisation

  • Own vision strategy and execution for Financial Crime Operations across domains spanning transaction monitoring investigations / FIU name and sanctions screening and fraud risk operations.

  • Build lead and develop highperforming teams across locations setting clear OKRs and operating rhythms.

• Manage robust scalable daytoday operations

  • Oversee alert handling investigations escalations and account actions across our products ensuring timely highquality decisions that balance risk customer experience and commercial impact.

  • Ensure accurate documentation clear audit trails and strong evidencing for all casework and decisions.

• Own firstline financial crime controls and SOPs

  • Design and continuously improve SOPs playbooks and control frameworks aligned to Airwallexs financial crime and fraud policies and standards set by 2LOD. Partner with Risk Product and Engineering and with Risk Strategy & AI Enablement to translate risk requirements into scalable system controls rules models and tooling.

• Partner closely with FCC and Regulatory & Compliance

  • Implement policy standards and risk appetite in operations including for high-risk industries and EDD use cases. Support regulatory engagements exams and audits by providing data narrative and evidence of effective first-line control operation.

• Drive risk assessment and deal escalation outcomes

  • Act as a key first-line reviewer in deal escalation and risk assessment processes assessing residual financial crime and fraud risk and recommending mitigants or conditions. Provide clear pragmatic guidance to Commercial Product and Partnerships teams on complex or novel structures.

• Lead transformation and continuous improvement

  • Identify and execute on opportunities to automate standardise and regionalise operational processes reducing manual effort and error rates while improving SLAs. Use data and analytics to track performance (alert volumes cycle times false positive rates SAR output fraud loss rates recovery rates) and drive iterative optimisation.

• Shape our risk culture

  • Champion high standards for integrity judgement and documentation in all financial crime operations work.

  • Act as a senior mentor and thought partner for leaders across the Risk Operations org 2LOD FCC and Regulatory & Compliance on financial crime and fraud topics..

Who you are

You are an experienced financial crime / fraud operations leader who thrives in highgrowth highambiguity environments and is excited to build a bestinclass firstline function in a global fintech.

Minimum qualifications

• Extensive experience (typically 10 years) across financial crime risk operations and/or fraud operations including leadership of multicountry teams in banks payments companies or highgrowth fintechs.

• Deep knowledge of AML / CTF sanctions fraud KYC transaction monitoring and investigations processes and controls and how they map into firstline operations.

• Proven track record leading largescale operational teams (managers investigators/analysts) with clear performance management coaching and succession planning.

• Demonstrated experience designing and running control frameworks QA and auditready documentation in integritysensitive environments.

• Strong partnership experience with 2LOD FCC / MLROs Regulatory Compliance Legal Risk and Product including on policy implementation escalations and regulatory engagements

• Excellent judgement under uncertainty able to balance risk regulatory expectations and commercial realities and to make clear wellreasoned decisions quickly.

• Outstanding communication skills able to distil complex risk topics for senior executives regulators and crossfunctional partners.

• Bachelors degree or equivalent experience; relevant professional certification (e.g. CAMS ICA ACAMS fraud or AML certifications) is a strong plus.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience operating in global payments or cross-border financial platforms including exposure to complex multi-jurisdictional financial crime and fraud regimes.

• Demonstrated success driving tooling and rule-set evolution with Risk Product / Engineering and data science teams including ML-enabled controls.

• Prior experience engaging directly with regulators or law enforcement on financial crime or fraud topics.

• Experience in high-growth API-first environments where speed scalability and resilience must coexist.

Applicant Safety Policy: Fraud and Third-Party Recruiters

To protect you from recruitment scams please be aware that Airwallex will not ask for bank details sensitive ID numbers (i.e. passport) or any form of payment during the application or interview process. All official communication will come from an @ email address. Please apply only through or our official LinkedIn page.

Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Airwallex will not pay any fees to search firms/recruiters if a candidate is submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless an agreement has been entered into with respect to specific open position(s). Search firms/recruiters submitting resumes to Airwallex on an unsolicited basis shall be deemed to accept this condition regardless of any other provision to the contrary.

Equal opportunity

Airwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit qualifications competence and talent. We dont regard color religion race national origin sexual orientation ancestry citizenship sex marital or family status disability gender or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation please let us know.

Required Experience:

Director