Associate Director, Regulatory Legal, Americas

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 150,000 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 1,800 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 26 offices around the globe. Valued at US$6.2 billion and backed by world-leading investors including Visa, Airtree, Blackbird, Sequoia, DST Global, Greenoaks, Salesforce Ventures, Lone Pine, and Square Peg, 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.

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. 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.

The Legal, Risk & Compliance (LRC) team at Airwallex is a collaborative group of legal minds and risk management experts. We're passionate about safeguarding Airwallex's operations, fostering a culture of compliance and ethical conduct, and ensuring we navigate the global financial landscape with integrity. We provide expert guidance and support to all areas of the business, proactively identifying, mitigating, and managing legal and financial risks.

What you'll do

As Associate Director, Regulatory Legal, Americas you will play a valuable role within the global legal and compliance team and will help our rapidly growing business navigate an increasingly complex regulatory landscape. Although you will be based in San Francisco you will have multi-regional responsibility by supporting our regulatory strategy and advising on complex regulatory issues in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. You will provide regulatory legal support for all aspects of our business, including payments, card issuing, card acquiring, Yield, and our SaaS offerings. You will also actively participate in the re-invention of the in-house regulatory legal function as a scalable AI-driven function. This dynamic role is ideal for someone who enjoys wearing multiple hats and solving complex issues for our clients, is detail oriented, willing to take on challenges and changes, obsessively curious and intellectually honest, thrives on taking actions and delivering impactful results, and aims to inspire and be inspired.

This role is based in San Francisco or New York City.

Responsibilities:

• Advise internal stakeholders, including Product, Commercial and other Legal teams, on a broad range of regulatory matters throughout the Americas

• Find ways to mitigate legal and regulatory risks while progressing business objectives

• Support license maintenance activities including managing regulatory relations, requests for information, and regulatory exams

• Review and update manuals, policies and procedures to ensure compliance with laws and regulations in the regions in which AWX operates while identifying opportunities to create efficiencies

• Manage and continue to grow the regional AWX reg legal team across multiple jurisdictions

• Manage external legal counsel and consultants, ensuring high-quality, cost-effective support is aligned with Airwallex’s business drivers and risk appetite

• Support and devise optimal paths to market to support Airwallex expansion activities

• Use AI to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of our Regulatory Legal function, including using existing third party tools and supporting the Legal function in developing and deploying AI-driven workflows

• Support government relations outreach to legislators and regulatory agencies

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:

• Juris Doctor and 8 years of post-qualification experience

• Strong regulatory experience gained in the fintech industry, reputable law firms or financial institutions

• Sound knowledge of the payments and credit card regulatory environments

• Experience managing and growing a team of lawyers

• Strong stakeholder management skills and ability to deal with a range of internal and external stakeholders

• Proactive, results-driven, and take ownership of your work

• Ability to multi-task and a team player with strong communication skills

• Strong drafting skills

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience working with stakeholders across the globe and on cross-border payments issues

• Experience advising on consumer regulatory matters

• Experience using AI, LegalTech and RegTech tools to enhance efficiency and effectiveness (bonus points for experience developing and deploying tools)

• Fluent in Spanish or Portuguese

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.

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. If you are approached by someone claiming to represent Airwallex, please verify with our team.

Compensation Range: $200K - $280K