Senior Director, Financial Risk

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 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 collaborative group that partners closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, Commercial, Financial Crime Compliance, Regulatory Compliance, and Legal teams to help Airwallex grow responsibly and with confidence. This is a team where you’ll tackle complex, high-impact challenges, shape how risk is managed at a global fintech, and help build the foundations for long-term scale. What you'll do You will lead Airwallex’s global second line Financial Risk function, setting the guardrails that allow the business to scale safely across products, markets, and balance sheet activities. This is a senior leadership role for someone who brings deep technical judgment across credit, liquidity, capital, market, and model risk, and who has operated with real authority in a regulated financial institution. You will shape the global framework, challenge first line decisions, and advise senior leadership on the most material financial risk issues facing the company. This role is based in the US or EMEA. Responsibilities: - Establish and lead Airwallex’s global Financial Risk framework across credit, liquidity, capital, market, and model risk, including the standards, policies, limits, and escalation paths that support safe product and business growth. - Own second line credit risk oversight by defining global underwriting standards, credit limits, and governance, reviewing and challenging first line lending policies, and deciding on complex or escalated credit exposures and exceptions. - Direct the firm’s liquidity, funding, and capital resilience agenda by overseeing intraday and structural liquidity risk, maintaining contingency funding readiness, designing stress testing scenarios, and supporting internal adequacy assessments and high-stakes regulatory submissions. - Set and enforce global FX and market risk guardrails, and partner closely with Finance and Treasury leaders on exposure management and hedging strategy. - Build and institutionalize model governance and independent validation across risk, pricing, forecasting, and automated decisioning models, ensuring strong inventory management, validation standards, and regulator-ready governance. - Lead and grow a high-performing Financial Risk team spanning Liquidity & Market Risk, Capital Risk & Stress Testing, Model Governance & Validation, and Lending, Acquiring & Counterparty oversight, while acting as a visible and trusted advisor to senior management, committees, boards, and regulators. 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: - You have 12 to 15+ years of experience in financial risk management within banks, fintechs, payments companies, digital banks, non-bank lenders, or similarly regulated financial institutions, including 5 to 7+ years in a senior leadership role with global or multi-jurisdictional scope. - You have deep expertise across several core financial risk disciplines, including credit risk, liquidity risk, capital adequacy, stress testing, FX or market risk, treasury risk, or model risk management. - You have strong second line experience designing frameworks, setting limits, challenging first line decisions, and escalating material matters to senior governance forums and executives. - You have direct experience developing or overseeing capital and liquidity adequacy frameworks such as ICAAP, ILAAP, or equivalent prudential processes, and designing or governing enterprise stress testing programs. - You have experience building or scaling model governance standards, validation processes, and model inventory governance in a regulated environment. - You have a bachelor’s degree in finance, economics, mathematics, statistics, engineering, actuarial science, or another quantitative discipline. Preferred qualifications: - You have experience leading financial risk in a global fintech, payments company, digital bank, or other high-growth platform business. - You have experience managing real-time liquidity, prefunding, cross-border payment rails, correspondent structures, or payment ecosystem risk. - You have familiarity with major prudential and model governance expectations, including Basel-related capital and liquidity frameworks and regulatory model risk standards. - You have experience with IFRS 9, expected credit loss methodologies, or quantitative underwriting and portfolio analytics environments. - You have an advanced degree in a quantitative discipline, or hold credentials such as CFA or FRM. 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.