Global Lead of Financial Risk

Airwallex•San Francisco, CA

1d•$200,000 - $300,000•Hybrid

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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.
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.
Strong second line experience designing frameworks, setting limits, challenging first line decisions, and escalating material matters to senior governance forums and executives.
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.
Experience building or scaling model governance standards, validation processes, and model inventory governance in a regulated environment.
A bachelor’s degree in finance, economics, mathematics, statistics, engineering, actuarial science, or another quantitative discipline.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading financial risk in a global fintech, payments company, digital bank, or other high-growth platform business.
Experience managing real-time liquidity, prefunding, cross-border payment rails, correspondent structures, or payment ecosystem risk.
Familiarity with major prudential and model governance expectations, including Basel-related capital and liquidity frameworks and regulatory model risk standards.
Experience with IFRS 9, expected credit loss methodologies, or quantitative underwriting and portfolio analytics environments.
An advanced degree in a quantitative discipline, or hold credentials such as CFA or FRM.

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.

Benefits

Global Risk team plays a critical role in enabling the company’s growth by building a strong, scalable, and globally consistent approach to risk management.
Work 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.
Highly collaborative group that partners closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, Commercial, Financial Crime Compliance, Regulatory Compliance, and Legal teams.
Tackle complex, high-impact challenges, shape how risk is managed at a global fintech, and help build the foundations for long-term scale.
Opportunity to do the most ambitious work of your career.
Accelerated learning and true ownership.
Move fast with good judgment, dig deep with curiosity, and make decisions from first principles, balancing speed and rigor.
Humble and collaborative environment.
Turn zero‑to‑one ideas into real products.
Get stuff done end-to-end.
Use AI to work smarter and solve problems faster.
Tackle complex, high-visibility problems with exceptional teammates and grow your career as we build the future of global banking.