Director, Financial Crime Risk Ops

About this role

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 – including Brex, Rippling, 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 2,200 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 26 offices around the globe. Valued at US$8 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

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

As Director, Financial Crime Risk Operations, you will own and scale our first‑line financial crime risk operations globally.

You will:

- 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 (alert volumes, cycle times, false positive rates, SAR output, fraud loss rates, recovery rates) 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 (managers, investigators/analysts) with clear performance management, coaching and succession planning.

- Demonstrated experience designing and…