Senior Manager, Regulatory Operations, APAC

ABOUT AIRWALLEX Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. More than 675,000 businesses, including McLaren Racing, Qantas, SHEIN, and TikTok, use us, directly or through our platform partners, to run their financial operations or build and monetize financial products of their own. We started in Melbourne in 2015 to build the infrastructure global commerce runs on. We're the regulated backbone behind global payments: not by accident, but by design. A decade plus, 85+ licenses, and a financial infrastructure spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. We're co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, with more than 2,700 people across 27 offices. We hire builders with founder-level energy, people who move fast with good judgment, dig in with real curiosity, and make calls from first principles rather than waiting to be told what to do. Read our operating principles https://www.airwallex.com/en-us/operating-principles to see it in full. About the team The Regulatory & Compliance team helps Airwallex grow responsibly as a global financial platform. We work at the intersection of law, regulation, risk, and business execution, partnering closely with teams across the company to navigate complexity, enable growth, and protect the trust our customers, partners, and regulators place in us. It’s a team for people who are thoughtful, practical, and energized by solving hard problems in a fast-moving, highly regulated environment. What you’ll do As Senior Manager, Regulatory Operations, APAC, you will build and run the engine that turns complex regulatory and partner obligations into real, tested, and well‑evidenced controls across our APAC‑licensed entities and products. You will sit within Regulatory Legal & Compliance and work closely with Regulatory Compliance, Regulatory Legal, Risk, Product, Operations, Finance, and external financial partners to strengthen a control environment that is practical, scalable, and regulator‑ready. This role is hands‑on and execution‑focused: you will not just interpret rules, you will design, implement, and continuously improve the controls, documentation, and reporting that demonstrate we are meeting our obligations day‑to‑day. This role is based in Singapore. Responsibilities: - Identify, interpret, and operationalize regulatory and partner obligations across APAC jurisdictions, products, and licensed entities, and translate those obligations into clear governance, controls, and execution requirements. - Manage the end‑to‑end design of key regulatory and partner controls through implementation, partnering with Product, Operations, Engineering, Risk, and Regulatory Compliance to embed controls into real workflows and systems. - Build and maintain regulator and partner‑ready documentation for your control scope, including obligation mappings, control descriptions, RACIs, testing approaches, evidence standards, and remediation tracking. - Engage with third parties such as regulators, auditors, and financial partners in connection with inquiries relating to controls, confidently explaining our obligations, our control architecture, and how specific controls operate in practice. - Support regulatory exams, audits, inspections, RFIs, and related supervisory engagements in APAC by coordinating responses, curating consistent evidence packages, maintaining “exam‑ready” documentation, and partnering with Regulatory Compliance and Regulatory Legal. - Support the governance process for material changes to controls, ensuring that relevant obligation owners and stakeholders across Product, Operations, Engineering and Compliance are notified and aligned before changes to shared controls are implemented, and that the obligations register reflects the updated control design. - Contribute to the design and operation of regional regulatory reporting and obligations governance, ensuring that what must be reported, by whom, when, and from which systems is clearly defined and appropriately controlled. - Identify gaps, inconsistencies, or duplication in obligations, controls, and evidence across APAC, and drive pragmatic remediation or uplift plans that balance regulatory expectations, partner requirements, and business impact. - Use and contribute to the team's GRC tooling and compliance dashboards, maintaining accurate and current records of APAC obligations, controls, evidence and open issues within the central system, and supporting the transition towards an AI Native GRC tooling. Who you are We're looking for people who meet the minimum requirements for this role. The preferred qualifications are great to have, but are not mandatory. Minimum qualifications: - 10+ years of experience in regulatory operations, regulatory compliance, internal audit, risk management, or a similar discipline within a fast‑growing tech startup and/or financial services, payments, or fintech company. - Proven experience translating legal, regulatory, or partner requirements into operational controls, procedures, and testing or assurance activities, not just policy drafting. - Direct involvement in supporting regulatory exams, audits, inspections, RFIs, or partner due‑diligence reviews, with clear personal ownership for planning, coordination, documentation, or remediation workstreams. - Strong project management skills, with a track record of driving cross‑functional control or reporting initiatives to completion across Product, Operations, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, and Risk. - Excellent analytical and writing skills, with the ability to turn complex regulatory concepts into clear, concise control requirements and exam‑ready materials. - Comfort operating in a fast‑moving, high‑standards environment with evolving priorities and meaningful cross‑functional ownership, consistent with Airwallex’s broader operating model. Preferred qualifications: - Experience with payments, e‑money, card issuing or acquiring