---
title: 'Head of Risk at Airwallex'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-risk-airwallex-london-reb4y3e4v9sg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-23'
---

# Head of Risk at Airwallex

- **Company:** [Airwallex](https://feeny.ai/companies/airwallex)
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Compensation:** $300k–$400k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-05-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-23
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/airwallex/5bcf2ca6-804d-4252-b794-363ee33bcb29/application

> Lead and scale Airwallex’s global second line risk management function, building robust frameworks and governance to enable responsible growth. Partner with senior executives to shape risk strategy, ensure regulatory compliance, and foster a strong risk culture across worldwide operations.

## 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

As Head of Risk, you will lead and scale Airwallex’s global second line risk management function across our worldwide operations. This is a senior leadership role for someone who can turn risk management into a business enabler by building robust frameworks, clear governance, effective monitoring, and a strong risk culture across a fast-growing fintech. You will work closely with the Chief Regulatory and Compliance Officer and senior executives across the company to shape Airwallex’s risk strategy, strengthen enterprise oversight, and ensure our products, markets, and entities operate within approved risk appetite and tolerance levels. This role is based in UK/Netherlands. Responsibilities:

- Develop and lead Airwallex’s global risk management function and framework, spanning risk monitoring, detection, policy development, governance, escalation, and assurance activities across the Group’s worldwide operations.
- Create and execute risk strategies, guidelines, performance metrics, and monitoring mechanisms that identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across Airwallex’s existing and future products, while keeping risk management aligned to business priorities and approved risk appetite.
- Partner closely with Risk Product, Risk Operations, Engineering, Product, Data Science, Commercial, Operations, Compliance, and other stakeholders to manage risk at the product, portfolio, market, merchant, and entity levels.
- Communicate Airwallex’s risk appetite clearly and effectively across the company, helping teams make sound decisions and strengthening consistent adoption of risk standards and accountability.
- Collaborate with business, operations, technology, and product leaders to deliver measurable business outcomes while minimising exposure to financial crime, fraud, counterparty, liability, and broader enterprise risks.
- Monitor, enhance, and embed the Risk Management Framework so that all global entities operate within acceptable risk tolerance levels and in line with Airwallex’s governance expectations.
- Work closely with the Chief Regulatory and Compliance Officer, the CEO, and other senior executives on risk, control, governance, and strategic decision-making topics, including escalation of material issues where appropriate.
- Advise management on external risk, governance, and regulatory requirements across the markets in which Airwallex operates, and help ensure the company’s risk posture evolves with its global footprint.
- Champion a strong and practical risk culture across Airwallex by reinforcing that risk excellence is a competitive advantage and a shared responsibility across the company.
- Recruit, develop, and lead a high performing global team of risk professionals, and help build a scalable second line organisation that can support Airwallex’s next phase of growth.

## 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:

- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Risk Management, Law, or a related field.
- 15+ years of relevant experience in Risk Management, Compliance, Control, or Audit within fintech, payments, remittance, banking, or broader financial services.
- Strong experience building or leading risk management frameworks, governance models, and oversight programmes in a complex, multi jurisdiction environment.
- Demonstrated ability to define and operationalise risk appetite, policies, metrics, and escalation processes that support business growth while maintaining effective control standards.
- Experience working closely with senior management and cross functional teams, with excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to influence at executive level.
- Experience leading international teams and operating effectively in a fast-paced environment with high standards, evolving priorities, and significant cross functional collaboration.

Preferred qualifications:

- Experience in fintech and financial services, especially in payments, consumer finance, remittance, or other global money movement businesses.
- A combination of advisory and hands on risk management experience within a financial institution or similarly regulated environment.
- Experience partnering with regulators, auditors, boards, or executive risk committees on enterprise risk, governance, and control matters.
- Comfort working across a broad risk landscape, including enterprise risk, fraud, counterparty risk, operational risk, and regulatory risk.
- An independent, high ownership mindset, with the judgment and pragmatism to balance control effectiveness, innovation, and growth in a scaling global business.

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.

## About Airwallex

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Airwallex is a financial technology company building a unified global payments and banking platform that helps businesses manage cross-border payments, treasury, spend, and financial operations through proprietary infrastructure, software, and AI.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series G)
- **Headquarters**: Dual headquarters in Singapore and San Francisco, USA; founded in Melbourne, Australia
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Jack Zhang (CEO), Lucy Liu, Max Li, Xijing Dai, and Ron Li

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Financial Services / Payments / Fintech Infrastructure
- Target customers: B2B, primarily serving SMBs, scaling enterprises, digital platforms, and marketplaces globally
- Mission or purpose statement: "Build the future of global banking" — they aim to replace legacy, fragmented banking systems with a borderless, intelligent, real-time financial operating system for modern businesses.

## Products & Services
- **[Business Accounts]**: Multi-currency global accounts to receive, hold, and manage funds in 20+ currencies, with local account details for key markets.
- **[Payments]**: Global payment acceptance via 160+ local payment methods, low-code checkout, and programmatic payout capabilities to 200+ countries.
- **[Spend / Corporate Cards]**: Multi-currency corporate and employee cards with customisable spend controls, designed for global teams.
- **[Expense Management]**: A platform to track, control, and reconcile global business expenses, including employee reimbursements.
- **[Billing & Subscription Management]**: A billing platform for usage-based and subscription pricing models, supporting AI companies and complex revenue workflows.
- **[Platform APIs]**: API-first infrastructure enabling businesses to embed financial services (accounts, payments, FX, card issuing) into their own products.
- **[FX & Treasury]**: Interbank foreign exchange rates and tools to intelligently manage currency risk across markets.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: US$11 billion (latest valuation in 2025, following a fresh investment round).
- **Key Metric**: US$1.8 billion in total funding raised; Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) surpassed US$1 billion by 2025.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Series G investors include prominent global venture capital firms (specific names not listed in source but backed by top-tier VCs); serves over 200,000 businesses including TikTok, Brex, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, and SHEIN.
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - US$287 billion in global payments processed (USD).
  - 92% of transfers settled same-day, 50% processed instantly.
  - Over 85 financial licenses and registrations globally.
  - Team of ~2,300 people across 27 offices internationally.
  - Dual-headquarters model (Singapore + San Francisco) adopted in 2025 to support next phase of growth.

## Competitive Advantages
- Proprietary, API-first infrastructure built from scratch (not riding legacy banking rails), enabling faster, cheaper, and more transparent cross-border transactions.
- Unified platform combining banking, payments, spend management, billing, and FX — reducing the need for multiple vendors.
- Deep AI integration across the platform to automate financial operations and provide intelligent insights.
- Extensive regulatory licensing (85+ licenses) across major markets, creating a high barrier to entry.
- Strong network effects: serves both direct businesses and platforms/marketplaces that embed Airwallex into their offerings.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue scaling the platform to support the rapid growth of AI-native companies and usage-based business models (highlighted by the launch of their global billing platform).
- Expand the dual-headquarters presence to tap into the largest tech talent markets (San Francisco and Singapore).
- Invest heavily in AI to build "interconnected, intelligent financial systems where money, data, and decisions move together."
- Deepen product capabilities to automate financial operations end-to-end for global businesses.

## Why Work Here
- High-growth, ambitious environment: described as "the most ambitious work of your career" by the company; founded in 2015 and already processing $287B in payments.
- Global impact and scale: work on infrastructure used by 200,000+ businesses, from startups to enterprises like TikTok and SHEIN.
- Hybrid/office culture: 27 offices globally (Melbourne, Singapore, San Francisco, London, Shanghai, Amsterdam, and more) offering opportunities to work across teams and locations.
- Engineering-driven culture: heavy emphasis on building proprietary technology, AI, and developer-first products.
- Notable perks: opportunity to work on a modern financial stack, exposure to cutting-edge AI/Fintech intersection, and a diverse, international team of "2,200 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech."

## Sources
1. [airwallex.com - Who We Are](https://www.airwallex.com/en-eu/who-we-are)
2. [airwallex.com - Global Platform](https://www.airwallex.com/global)
3. [careers.airwallex.com](https://careers.airwallex.com/)
4. [LinkedIn - Airwallex](https://www.linkedin.com/company/airwallex)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com - Airwallex](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/airwallex)

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