Senior Manager, Strategy & Operations CEO Office

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.

The CEO Office Strategy & Operations team partners directly with Airwallex's executive leadership on the company's most important priorities. We work across regions and functions to drive clarity, build scalable operating models, and ensure the right work gets done at the right time. The team combines rigorous problem‑solving with hands‑on execution, rolling up our sleeves to take complex, zero‑to‑one initiatives from idea to reality. It is a high‑visibility, fast‑paced environment where you will collaborate with leaders across Product, Engineering, Legal, Risk, Finance, and Operations to shape the next phase of Airwallex's global growth.

You’ll lead high-priority, company-wide initiatives from strategy through execution, working directly with executive leadership to turn ambiguous problems into clear plans and measurable outcomes. You’ll help shape how Airwallex expands, scales its operating model, and makes decisions across markets, products, and functions.

• Drive strategic analysis, operating-model design, governance, executive communication, and hands-on delivery across Product, Engineering, Legal, Risk, Finance, and Operations.

• Build repeatable systems for complex programmes through AI-assisted research, modelling, documentation, and workflow automation.

• Shape how Airwallex expands, scales its operating model, and makes decisions across markets, products, and functions.

• Lead priority CEO Office initiatives beyond core expansion work, bringing structure and momentum to complex, cross-functional problems.

You’ll work from our London office three days a week.

• 5–8 years of experience in top-tier strategy consulting, regulatory or financial services law, or strategy, operations, or expansion roles in fintech or payments, with meaningful exposure to market-entry or licensing-driven projects.

• A proven track record of owning complex, multi-stakeholder programmes end to end, including planning, execution, and executive-level updates.

• Strong operating discipline, with experience structuring multi-workstream programmes, running governance cadences, managing dependencies, and driving timely decision-making.

• Experience working with or around regulatory and licensing topics in financial services, such as payments, e-money, banking, or card issuing.

• Demonstrated use of AI tools in your day-to-day work, such as regulatory research, licence mapping, competitive analysis, documentation, or workflow automation, with good judgment on verification and when to involve subject-matter experts.

• Exceptional stakeholder-management and communication skills, including the ability to simplify complex issues, influence senior leaders, and create clear, concise materials for steering forums.

• High ownership, comfort with ambiguity, and a willingness to get hands-on in the detail to move important initiatives forward.

• Direct experience driving new-market launches or licence applications in EMEA or the Middle East for a fintech, payments provider, or financial institution.

• A background combining strategic problem-solving and execution, such as experience in both consulting and an in-house operating role, or in both legal or regulatory and commercial or product-adjacent roles.

• Familiarity with cross-functional global expansion and product-launch processes, including how Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Risk, and Operations work together for new-country launches.

• Experience working in or closely with a CEO Office, Strategy & Operations, or similar central team responsible for company-level initiatives and special projects.

• Comfort building and iterating lightweight AI tooling to standardise launches and automate status reporting, risk tracking, and dependency management.

• You're comfortable owning the roadmap yourself.

• You're comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and moving quickly anyway.

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

• You know when to align and when to just decide. Collaboration isn't a way to avoid accountability.

• You say what you mean. You're direct, but you lead with respect.

Most strategy roles hand you a slide deck. This one hands you the keys.

Strategy & Operations finds the next point of leverage in a hyper-growth fintech, then builds the system to capture it. We spot opportunities early, design how Airwallex scales into them, and turn that vision into the machinery that drives revenue across markets and products.

You'll get the kind of access most people wait a decade for: a direct line to the growth engine, work that spans every function, and the freedom to own ambiguous, high-stakes problems end to end.

And you won't do it the old way. We arm our people with AI to move faster than teams ten times our size, modeling, researching, and shipping at a pace that creates an unfair advantage.

If you want to do the best work of your career on problems that actually matter, build with us.

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 email address. Please apply only through 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.

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.