Senior Manager, Strategy & Operations, CEO Office

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 Manager, Strategy & Operations, CEO Office, you’ll own the end-to-end expansion of Airwallex into new markets across APAC — from defining market-entry strategy through licensing, product readiness, operational launch, and preparation for commercial scale-up. You’ll work directly with executive leadership to solve the regulatory, product, and operating problems required to establish Airwallex as a local financial platform in each market. - Own the strategy for where and how Airwallex expands next across APAC, sizing opportunities, prioritising markets, and defining what it takes to win in each one. - Design the market-entry model for each market, including the licensing path, entity structure, and commercial model, translating regulatory and licensing requirements into the operating model Airwallex needs on the ground. - Shape the product roadmap with Product and Engineering, turning regulatory and licensing requirements into concrete product scope and sequencing so the roadmap supports local launch and scale. - Partner directly with CEO Office leadership and senior executives to frame decisions on global expansion, presenting recommendations on market prioritisation, launch readiness, and investment. - Build the operating system for market launches by creating AI-assisted tools, templates, dashboards, and operating rhythms for licence mapping, competitor analysis, reporting, and workflow automation. - Own the go/no-go https://app.glean.com/go/no-go and launch-readiness process, coordinating cross-functional sign-off, risk assessment, and mitigation plans across product, operational, regulatory, and commercial dimensions. - Flex onto priority CEO Office initiatives beyond core market launches, including strategic reviews, restructuring or migration projects, crisis-response workstreams, and cross-market structuring exercises. - Work directly with executive leadership to solve the regulatory, product, and operating problems required to establish Airwallex as a local financial platform in each market. This role is based in Singapore. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Essentials - 7+ years of experience in top-tier strategy consulting, regulatory or financial services law, or strategy and expansion roles in fintech or payments, with meaningful exposure to market-entry or licensing-driven projects. - A proven track record of owning complex, multi-stakeholder programmes end to end, including planning, execution, and executive-level updates. - Strong operating discipline, with confidence structuring multi-workstream programmes, running governance cadences, managing dependencies across functions, and driving timely decision-making. - Experience working with or around regulatory and licensing topics in financial services, such as payments, e-money, banking, or card issuing, and comfort engaging with Legal, Risk, and Compliance counterparts. - Demonstrated use of AI tools in day-to-day work, such as regulatory research, licence mapping, competitive analysis, documentation, or workflow automation, with good judgment on verification and when to involve subject-matter experts. - Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, including the ability to simplify complex issues, influence senior leaders, and create clear, concise materials for steering forums. - High ownership, comfort with ambiguity, and a willingness to get hands-on in the details to move launches forward in a fast-paced environment. Preferred - Direct experience driving new-market launches or licence applications in APAC for a fintech, payments provider, or financial institution. - A background that combines strategic problem-solving and execution, such as experience in both consulting and an in-house operating role, or in both legal or regulatory and commercial or product-adjacent roles. - Familiarity with cross-functional global expansion and product-launch processes, including how Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Risk, and Operations intersect for new-country launches. - Experience working in or closely with a CEO Office, Strategy & Operations, or similar central team that runs company-level initiatives and special projects. - Comfort building and iterating lightweight AI tooling to standardise launch execution and automate status, risk tracking, and dependency management over time. YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF - You're comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and moving quickly anyway. - You own the outcome and you don't wait for permission to fix what's broken. - You connect dots across functions and hold the big picture without losing grip on the details. - You know when to align and when to just decide. Collaboration isn't a way to avoid accountability. - You communicate clearly and directly across cultures, and you're thoughtful about how context shifts meaning across borders. LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR TEAM Most strategy roles hand you a slide deck.