Financial Partnerships Operations Manager, Americas

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 Financial Partnerships Operations team supports smooth day-to-day collaboration with Airwallex’s banking partners across our global entities. We work closely with Financial Partnerships Managers, external financial institutions, and internal teams to improve processes, manage partner requirements, support new market expansion, and deliver high-impact results across Airwallex’s products. WHAT YOU'LL DO Reporting to the Director, Partnerships Strategy & Operations, you will help support the day-to-day operations of the Financial Partnerships team and the continued growth of the organisation. You will play a significant role in our communications with external banking and financial partners, while helping ensure compliance with applicable regulations and maintaining the trust of our customers and stakeholders. You will work with teams and partners across Airwallex’s product offerings, including Issuing, Online Payments, and Global Treasury & Payment Network. This is an opportunity to join a growing team, improve how we operate at scale, and help shape the next phase of Airwallex’s global growth. This role is based in New York, NY. RESPONSIBILITIES: - Collaborate with the Financial Partnerships team as Airwallex expands into new markets and grows its network of banking, payment, and financial-institution partners. - Support the operational relationship with financial partners throughout their lifecycle with Airwallex, from onboarding and due diligence through integration, launch, steady state, and expansion. - Track prevailing rules, regulations, scheme requirements, and upcoming changes affecting banks, payment service providers, card schemes, and alternative payment methods. - Develop continuous process improvements to enhance operational efficiency and effectiveness. This may involve building new processes, streamlining existing workflows, leveraging technology, and implementing best practices. - Own the triage of partner escalations, operational requests, and internal dependencies, ensuring issues are routed to the right teams and resolved in a timely manner against agreed KPIs. - Coordinate regular due diligence sessions with Financial Crime Compliance and other relevant control functions, ensuring partner requirements are understood, documented, and completed on time. - Partner with financial institutions on change management, ensuring new releases, scheme requirements, regulatory changes, and partner requests are executed properly by Product, Engineering, and Operations teams. - Generate and present reports to senior management and financial partners, providing clear visibility into partner health, implementation progress, operational risks, and areas for improvement. - Contribute to scalable operating mechanisms, including partner scorecards, governance forums, QBRs, intake processes, playbooks, and performance dashboards. 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: - Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience. - At least 4 years of experience in financial services, fintech, payments, banking operations, strategy, business operations, partnerships, consulting, or a related field. Experience in a fast-growing technology company or top-tier financial institution is preferred. - Strong project-management experience, with a track record of improving processes, policies, products, or operational workflows. - Excellent attention to detail and the ability to manage multiple workstreams, deadlines, dependencies, and escalations. - Effective written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate clearly with senior stakeholders and external partners. - Strong analytical skills, including proficiency with relevant tools such as Excel, Google Sheets, Looker, or similar reporting and analysis platforms. - The ability to think critically and creatively while balancing growth, customer experience, operational effectiveness, and risk. - Experience collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders across functions, regions, cultures, and levels of seniority. - The ability to work independently in a fast-paced and rapidly changing environment. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: - Experience working directly with banking partners, sponsor banks, payment processors, card schemes, payment service providers, local payment methods, or other regulated financial institutions. - Familiarity with payment flows, acquiring or issuing, network rules, scheme mandates, KYC or KYB, due diligence, or technical integration processes. - Experience building scalable operating mechanisms such as governance forums, partner scorecards, dashboards, QBRs, intake processes, or global playbooks. - Experience coordinating cross-functional implementation across Product, Engineering, Treasury, Risk, Legal, Financial Crime Compliance, Fin