Counsel, Product Legal, Financial and Strategic Partnerships

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 Legal and Licensing team at Airwallex is a collaborative group of legal minds and licensing experts. We provide expert guidance and support to all areas of the business, proactively identifying, mitigating, and managing legal and financial risks. What you’ll do As Counsel, Product Legal, Financial & Strategic Partnerships, you will play a key role in the legal strategy and execution for Airwallex’s global network of banking and strategic partners, with a primary base in Singapore. You will partner closely with our Financial Partnerships, Strategic Partnerships, Product and Risk teams to structure, negotiate and scale complex deals that underpin our issuing, payments, embedded finance, and yield products. You will also work on partnerships that will enable new market launches and enhance customer acquisition.. In addition to working on complex deals, you will design processes and playbooks that enable fast, repeatable contracting, and help embed AI into our workflows to increase quality and velocity. This dynamic role is ideal for a product / partnerships lawyer who is comfortable operating at pace in a high‑growth fintech, balancing commercial outcomes with rigorous risk management, and thrives on taking action and delivering results This role is based in Singapore. Responsibilities: - Lead and execute complex negotiations with banking partners, payment schemes and other financial institutions, using centralized playbooks, escalation matrices and AI‑enabled workflows to manage legal and commercial risk. - Lead legal support for strategic partnerships with global technology, ecosystem and platform partners, ensuring fund flows, data flows and user journeys are robust, scalable and compliant across multiple jurisdictions. - Establish and maintain high standards for documentation hygiene, including centralized deal trackers, legal risk registers and contract repositories integrated with AI tooling, so the business can self‑serve and re‑use prior work effectively. - Design, implement and continuously improve processes, templates and playbooks for contracting with banking and strategic partners, including intake, risk review, escalation, execution, storage and implementation handoffs to product domain owners and user terms owners. - Champion the use of AI tools in Product Legal, including AI‑assisted contract review, legal risk reviews and PRD analysis, to drive scalable, repeatable workflows and measurable improvements in speed and quality. - Partner with Product, Financial Partnerships, Strategic Partnerships, Regulatory Legal, Risk and Commercial teams on new product launches, new regions and complex deal structures, ensuring alignment with Airwallex’s licensing, risk appetite and AI‑native strategy. - Act as a trusted advisor to executives and deal owners on risk‑weighted options, escalation decisions and trade‑offs in high‑value or strategically significant partnerships. 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: - 5+ years of post‑qualification experience as a lawyer, including significant time at a top‑tier law firm and/or in‑house in fintech, payments, banking or adjacent financial services. - Deep experience drafting and negotiating complex commercial and regulatory‑sensitive agreements with banks, payment schemes or other financial partners, ideally across multiple regions. - Proven experience advising on and negotiating strategic partnerships with large technology, platform or ecosystem partners, including multi‑product and multi‑market arrangements. - Demonstrated ability to build and improve legal processes, playbooks and templates that enable efficient, repeatable contracting at scale, while maintaining strong controls and clear escalation paths. - Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence senior commercial, product and risk leaders in a fast‑moving, high‑growth environment. - Qualified to practice law in a common law jurisdiction (for example, Singapore, England & Wales, US, Australia) or equivalent, with strong academic credentials. Preferred qualifications: - Familiarity with payments, issuing, embedded finance or related products, and the regulatory frameworks that apply to cross‑border financial services. - Prior experience in a legal role at a high‑growth technology company, payments company or bank. - Experience implementing or working with AI‑enabled legal tools (e.g. Harvey, Claude etc.) to enhance contract review processes and knowledge management, and comfort driving AI adoption in a legal team. - Direct experience supporting partnerships that enable issuing, card programs, embedded finance, stablecoin or digital asset rails, or other next‑generation financial infrastructure. - Ability to operate autonomously, prioritize ruthlessly and move fast with conviction in an AI‑native, global organization, while upholding high standards of craftsmanship and long‑term risk management. 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.