Senior Director, Enterprise Risk Management

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. HOW YOU'LL MAKE IMPACT As Senior Director, Enterprise Risk Management, you'll shape and scale Airwallex's enterprise risk management capability across the US and EMEA, ensuring risk management enables growth rather than becoming a check-the-box exercise. You'll translate Board-approved risk appetite into practical decision-making, strengthen governance and reporting, and turn complex risk signals into clear action for senior leaders. - Shape Airwallex's enterprise risk architecture, including risk appetite, taxonomy, governance standards, escalation protocols and enterprise-wide oversight. - Translate complex risk data, issues and trends into clear, decision-useful reporting for the C-suite, Board committees and external stakeholders, while providing independent challenge where initiatives exceed approved risk appetite or control maturity. - Guide risk-informed governance for new products, markets, major systems changes and organisational changes, maintaining effective controls and clear accountability for material issues. - Strengthen the enterprise crisis management framework, including escalation triggers, governance and executive response mechanisms, and improve preparedness for severe but plausible events across operational, regulatory, technology and business domains. - Build a unified, risk-aware culture and lead a high-performing global second-line team, partnering with Product, Engineering, Operations, Commercial, Compliance, Legal, Treasury, Finance and regional leadership. You'll work from our London office three days a week. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Essentials - A bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business, Law, STEM or another relevant quantitative field. - 10 to 15+ years of experience in risk management, operational risk, enterprise risk, compliance, controls or audit within financial services, fintech, payments, banking or another highly regulated environment. - At least 5+ years leading enterprise risk management, operational risk or governance programmes in a complex, matrixed, multi-jurisdiction organisation. - Experience designing, building or scaling second-line-of-defence frameworks, including risk appetite statements, risk taxonomies, governance processes and escalation mechanisms. - Strong familiarity with the regulatory environment relevant to electronic money institutions and payments firms, including practical exposure to regulators such as the FCA, DNB, Bank of Lithuania, MAS and FinCEN. - Experience preparing risk papers and communicating effectively with senior executives, Board or committee audiences, regulators or auditors, with excellent written and verbal communication skills. - Experience defining crisis or incident governance frameworks and leading or supporting executive-level responses to material operational, regulatory or business events. - A high-ownership, pragmatic approach, with the ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced environment with evolving priorities and significant cross-functional collaboration. Preferred - An advanced degree such as an MBA, Master's in Risk Management or JD. - A professional certification such as FRM, PRM, CRMA, CAMS or CFE. - Deep fintech and payments experience, including exposure to cross-border payments, merchant acquiring, card scheme environments, local payment methods or multi-entity regulated groups. - Experience managing risk approvals and governance in a high-velocity product and engineering environment where new features, products, markets or operating models are launched frequently. - Strong data literacy and comfort using dashboards, metrics and technology-enabled tools to support risk oversight and reporting. - A clear bias toward automation, AI and scalable tooling to improve issue management, reporting and second-line efficiency, paired with the judgment to balance innovation, business agility and control effectiveness. YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF - You've operated in a compliance-heavy environment and know how to move fast without cutting the corners that matter. - You're comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and moving quickly anyway. - You connect dots across functions and hold the big picture without losing grip on the details. - You say what you mean. You're direct, but you lead with respect. - You enjoy working closely with people across multiple countries and time zones as part of one connected, global team, including flexing your hours occasionally to make that connection work. LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR TEAM The Global Risk team at Airwallex plays a critical role in enabling the company's growth by building a strong, scalable, and globally consistent approach to risk management. The team works across the business to define risk appetite, develop frameworks and policies, support strategic decision-making, and provide oversight of key risks as Airwallex expands across products, markets, and regulatory environments. You'll be part of a highly coll