Manager, Regulatory Operations

About Airwallex

Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. More than 675,000 businesses, including McLaren Racing, Qantas, SHEIN, and TikTok, use us, directly or through our platform partners, to run their financial operations or build and monetize financial products of their own.

We started in Melbourne in 2015 to build the infrastructure global commerce runs on. We're the regulated backbone behind global payments: not by accident, but by design. A decade plus, 85+ licenses, and a financial infrastructure spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

We're co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, with more than 2,700 people across 27 offices. We hire builders with founder-level energy, people who move fast with good judgment, dig in with real curiosity, and make calls from first principles rather than waiting to be told what to do. Read our operating principles to see it in full.

How you'll make impact

As Manager, Regulatory Operations, US, you will help build and operate the framework that turns complex regulatory and partner obligations into real, tested, and well-evidenced controls across Airwallex's US-licensed entities and products. You will sit within Regulatory Legal & Compliance and work closely with Regulatory Compliance, Regulatory Legal, Risk, Product, Operations, Finance, and external financial partners to strengthen a control environment that is practical, scalable, and regulator-ready.

This role is hands-on and execution-focused: you will not just interpret rules, you will help design, implement, and continuously improve the controls, documentation, and reporting that demonstrate we are meeting our obligations day to day. You will be based in the United States and work closely with stakeholders across the broader global organization.

• Identify, interpret, and operationalize regulatory and partner obligations across US jurisdictions, products, and licensed entities, translating them into clear governance, controls, and execution requirements.

• Manage the end-to-end design and implementation of key regulatory and partner controls, partnering with Product, Operations, Engineering, Risk, and Regulatory Compliance to embed controls into real workflows and systems.

• Build and maintain regulator- and partner-ready documentation, including obligation mappings, control descriptions, RACIs, testing approaches, evidence standards, and remediation tracking.

• Engage with regulators, auditors, and financial partners on control-related inquiries, clearly explaining obligations, control architecture, and how specific controls operate in practice.

• Support US regulatory exams, audits, inspections, RFIs, and related supervisory engagements by coordinating responses, curating consistent evidence packages, maintaining exam-ready documentation, and partnering with Regulatory Compliance and Regulatory Legal.

• Contribute to the design and operation of US regulatory reporting and obligations governance, ensuring that reporting requirements, ownership, timing, and source systems are clearly defined and appropriately controlled.

• Identify gaps, inconsistencies, or duplication across US obligations, controls, and evidence, and drive pragmatic remediation or uplift plans that balance regulatory expectations, partner requirements, and business impact.

• Help establish consistent obligations-management practices that can scale with Airwallex’s US business and align with the broader global regulatory operating model.
  

You'll work from our San Francisco or New York office three days a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

What we're looking for

We're looking for people who meet the minimum requirements for this role. The preferred qualifications are great to have, but are not mandatory.

Essentials

• 7+ years of experience in regulatory operations, regulatory compliance, internal audit, risk management, or a similar discipline within a fast-growing technology company and/or financial services, payments, or fintech company.

• Proven experience translating legal, regulatory, or partner requirements into operational controls, procedures, and testing or assurance activities, not just policy drafting.

• Direct involvement in supporting regulatory exams, audits, inspections, RFIs, or partner due-diligence reviews, with clear personal ownership for planning, coordination, documentation, or remediation workstreams.

• Strong project management skills, with a track record of driving cross-functional control or reporting initiatives to completion across Product, Operations, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, and Risk.

• Excellent analytical and writing skills, with the ability to turn complex regulatory concepts into clear, concise control requirements and exam-ready materials.

• Comfort operating in a fast-moving, high-standards environment with evolving priorities and meaningful cross-functional ownership, consistent with Airwallex’s broader operating model.
  
  

Preferred

• Experience with payments, e-money, card issuing or acquiring, treasury, embedded finance, or other multi-jurisdiction fintech business models.

• Prior exposure to US regulators and regulatory frameworks, including FinCEN, state financial regulators, the CFPB, or other relevant federal and state authorities, as well as US bank or card scheme partners on control or reporting topics.

• Experience building or enhancing obligations registers, control libraries, regulatory reporting operating models, or similar second-line compliance infrastructure.

• Familiarity with GRC or similar tooling to manage obligations, controls, issues, and evidence at scale.

• Relevant professional certifications, such as CAMS, CRCM, CIA, or CISA, or formal legal, compliance, risk, or audit-related education.
  
  

You'll thrive here if

• You're comfortable with ambiguity. Give you a problem, not a prescription, and you'll run with it.

• You connect dots across functions and hold the big picture without losing grip on the details.

• You simplify complexity rather than hiding behind it.

• You own the outcome and you don't wait for permission to fix what's broken.

• You’re comfortable operating across time zones with a globally distributed team, including colleagues based in APAC and EMEA.