Account Executive, Startups (AI Solutions)

Job description

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 250,000 businesses worldwide – including Brex, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more – 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 2,300 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 27 offices around the globe. Valued at US$11 billion and backed by world-leading investors including T. Rowe Price, Visa, Mastercard, Robinhood Ventures, Sequoia, Salesforce Ventures, DST Global, and Lone Pine Capital, Airwallex is leading the charge in building the global payments and financial platform of the future. If you’re ready to do the most ambitious work of your career, join us. 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 https://www.airwallex.com/us/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. Here, you’ll tackle complex, high‑visibility problems with exceptional teammates and grow your career as we build the future of global banking. If that sounds like you, let’s build what’s next. ABOUT THE TEAM The Startups team at Airwallex partners with the most promising venture-backed companies across Asia to provide seamless access to our global financial infrastructure — empowering them to scale without borders. We sit at the intersection of fintech product, venture capital networks, and founder communities, taking a hands-on, consultative approach to helping startups professionalise their cross-border financial operations from their earliest institutional funding round through to growth stage and beyond. Our motion is equal parts commercial and ecosystem. We build deep relationships with top-tier VCs, co-host events with accelerators and ecosystem partners, and embed ourselves in the startup communities across Singapore and the broader region. We are a tight, high-conviction team seeking to seed and grow lasting relationships with the companies that will define the next decade of innovation in Asia. WHY THIS ROLE IS DIFFERENT — AI SOLUTIONS This is not a standard payments sales role. Airwallex has built AgentOS — a production-grade toolkit that lets AI agents work directly with a company's Airwallex account, so founders and finance teams can run cross-border finance operations in plain English instead of clicking through a dashboard. We're one of the first cross-border platforms in the world to ship this, and Singapore is one of the first markets where we're taking it to founders. As the AI Solutions AE for Singapore startups, you'll be on the front line of that motion. You won't just sell accounts and FX — you'll help AI-native and AI-curious founders reimagine how their finance function runs: multi-currency cash visibility, supplier onboarding, corporate cards and spend, and billing, increasingly driven by agentic workflows. You'll be expected to become genuinely fluent in our AI finance story, translate an early and fast-moving capability into concrete value for each company, and help us build some of our first AgentOS customer stories. Comfort with ambiguity and a real interest in where AI is taking finance are essential — this is beta-stage, frontier work. WHAT YOU'LL DO As an Account Executive on the Startups team, you will own the full sales cycle — from sourcing and prospecting through to close, onboarding, and ongoing account growth. You will work closely with venture capital partners, ecosystem organisations, and founders directly to build pipeline, convert high-value startup customers, and grow their usage of the Airwallex platform — including our AI finance and AgentOS capabilities — over time. This is a role for someone passionate about the startup world, energised by founder conversations, excited by AI, and looking to be known in the ecosystem as a trusted partner who helps startups get their financial plumbing right and points them toward what's next. RESPONSIBILITIES FULL-CYCLE SALES & CONSULTATIVE SELLING - Own the end-to-end sales process for startup prospects — from initial outreach and discovery through to commercial negotiation, onboarding, and go-live. - Lead consultative, needs-based conversations with founders, finance managers, and CFOs to uncover cross-border pain points and map Airwallex solutions to their specific stage, vertical, and expansion plans. - Develop a strong command of our product and common startup financial operations challenges — including multi-currency treasury, FX cost management, corporate card and spend management, entity setup across jurisdictions, and global payouts — and position Airwallex as the platform that consolidates and simplifies these workflows. - Build and present tailored business cases that go beyond feature comparison, helping prospects understand the downstream implications of their current setup and the strategic value of upgrading their financial infrastructure early. AI FINANCE & AGENTOS SOLUTIONING - Develop deep, credible fluency in Airwallex's AI finance offering and keep pace as the product rapidly evolves. - Identify which prospects and existing customers are the best fit for agentic finance workflows, and design concrete, company-specific use cases that map AgentOS skills to real pains. - Run discovery and demos that bring the workflow shift to life, while framing trust and safety honestly for non-technical founders (the agent prepares and drafts; humans approve anything that moves money). - Help seed and document our first AgentOS customer stories in Singapore, and feed learnings back to product and the broader Startups team to sharpen the motion. BACKBOOK OWNERSHIP & ACCOUNT GROWTH - Retain and grow a named portfolio of existing startup customers, ensuring they remain active, satisfied, and expanding their usage of the platform. - Monitor customer activity levels, flag churn risks early, and proactively identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities — particularly around product adoption (e.g. spend management, billing/PA, yield, and AI finance workflows). - Serve as the primary relationship holder for your portfolio, maintaining regular touchpoints with founders and finance teams and acting as their internal advocate. - Identify and action graduation opportunities — surfacing high-growth accounts to enterprise or theme teams when deal complexity or GP potential warrants a co-sell or handover. VC PARTNERSHIPS & WARM INTRODUCTIONS - Work closely with our Venture Partnerships function to convert VC relationships into qualified, warm introductions to portfolio companies. - Develop familiarity with the portfolio companies of our priority VC partners and maintain a clear view of which companies represent the strongest product-market fit for Airwallex. - Contribute insights back to the Venture Partnerships team on what's resonating with portfolio companies, what objections arise, and where we can sharpen our value proposition to VCs. COMMUNITY, EVENTS & ECOSYSTEM ENGAGEMENT - Actively participate in startup community events, founder networking sessions, VC-hosted gatherings, and ecosystem activations. - Represent Airwallex at external events with credibility and enthusiasm, engaging founders in genuine conversation and building relationships that extend beyond a single transaction. - Attend and engage with industry meetups, accelerator demo days, and partner events. - Contribute to the team's community presence through activities such as social media engagement, content sharing, and being a visible and helpful presence in the startup ecosystem. WHO YOU ARE MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS - 5 years of sales experience in a B2B SaaS, fintech, or payments environment, with a track record of meeting or exceeding targets. - Experience selling into venture-backed startups or working within the startup/VC ecosystem. - Familiarity with the Asia startup landscape — key VCs, accelerators, co-working communities, and the general rhythm of the ecosystem. - Demonstrated ability to run a full sales cycle independently — from self-sourced prospecting through to negotiation and close. - Strong consultative selling instincts — you lead with curiosity, ask sharp discovery questions, and build value through understanding rather than pitching features. - Strong acumen with current AI tools, deploying and managing agents, and AI-native solution design. You're the kind of person who experiments with AI tools, follows where the space is going, and gets energised (not intimidated) by an early-stage, fast-changing product. - Genuine affinity and experience in the startup ecosystem. - Comfort with cross-border financial operations concepts. - Excellent communication and relationship-building skills — you're articulate, professional, and equally comfortable presenting to a room of founders as you are doing a 1:1 deep-dive with a finance lead over coffee. - Proficiency with CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce) and structured pipeline management. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS - Background in fintech, payments, or financial services with an understanding of products such as global accounts, payment acceptance, FX, card issuing, or spend management. - Hands-on exposure to AI tools and agentic workflows (e.g. Claude, Cursor, or similar), or a track record of being an early adopter who can make new technology tangible for non-technical audiences. - Experience managing a backbook or portfolio of accounts alongside new business responsibilities, with demonstrated ability to retain and grow existing customers. - A visible personal presence in the startup community — whether through event attendance, LinkedIn activity, community involvement, or existing relationships with founders and investors. - Entrepreneurial mindset — prior founder experience or side-project background is a genuine plus, as it deepens your empathy for the customers we serve. 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 http://airwallex.com email address. Please apply only through careers.airwallex.com http://careers.airwallex.com or our official LinkedIn page. Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Airwallex will not pay any fees to search firms/recruiters if a candidate is submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless an agreement has been entered into with respect to specific open position(s). Search firms/recruiters submitting resumes to Airwallex on an unsolicited basis shall be deemed to accept this condition, regardless of any other provision to the contrary. 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. We don’t regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.