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 200,000 businesses worldwide 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 2,000 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 26 offices around the globe.

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 you’re 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. You're humble and collaborative; turn zero-to-one ideas into real products, and you “get stuff done” end-to-end. You use AI to work smarter and solve problems faster.

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 you’ll do

• 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 high-performing teams across locations, setting clear OKRs and operating rhythms.
• Manage robust, scalable day-to-day operations.
• Oversee alert handling, investigations, escalations and account actions across our products, ensuring timely, high-quality decisions that balance risk, customer experience and commercial impact.
• Ensure accurate documentation, clear audit trails and strong evidencing for all casework and decisions.
• Own first-line financial crime controls and SOPs.
• Design and continuously improve SOPs, playbooks and control frameworks, aligned to Airwallex's 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 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 high-growth, high-ambiguity environments and is excited to build a best-in-class first-line function in a global fintech.

Minimum Qualifications

• Extensive experience (typically 10+ years) across financial crime risk operations and/or fraud operations, including leadership of multi-country teams in banks, payments companies or high-growth fintechs.
• Deep knowledge of AML / CTF, sanctions, fraud, KYC, transaction monitoring and investigations processes and controls, and how they map into first-line operations.
• Proven track record leading large-scale operational teams with clear performance management, coaching and succession planning.
• Demonstrated experience designing and running control frameworks, QA and audit-ready documentation in integrity-sensitive 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, well-reasoned decisions quickly.
• Outstanding communication skills – able to distil complex risk topics for senior executives, regulators and cross-functional partners.
• Bachelor’s 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 @airwallex.com email address. Please apply only through careers.airwallex.com or our official LinkedIn page. Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters.

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.