Enterprise Risk Manager - UAE

Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. More than 676,000 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 2,300 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.

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 Enterprise Risk Manager - UAE, you will help establish and evolve Airwallex’s enterprise risk management capability in the UAE, while contributing to the broader global and regional risk agenda. You will help ensure that risk management supports responsible growth as Airwallex operationalises its UAE entity and expands its regulated payments offering in the region.

Airwallex has secured in-principle approval from the Central Bank of the UAE for Stored Value Facilities and Category II Retail Payment Services licences. These approvals support the planned provision of services including multi-currency accounts, global transfers, payment acceptance and corporate cards in the UAE.

Responsibilities:

• Adapt and operationalise Airwallex’s global enterprise risk architecture for the UAE, including risk appetite, risk taxonomy, governance standards, risk limits, escalation protocols, reporting and decision rights.

• Partner with Regulatory Compliance, Legal and UAE leadership to ensure risk governance reflects applicable Central Bank of the UAE expectations and requirements relevant to Stored Value Facilities and Retail Payment Services.

• Translate risk data, incidents, issues, trends and key risk indicators into clear, decision-useful reporting for UAE management, regional leadership, risk committees and, where appropriate, the Board or regulators.

• Act as a trusted, independent second-line advisor, providing constructive challenge where initiatives may exceed approved risk appetite, regulatory expectations or the maturity of the control environment.

• Support risk assessment and approval for new products, payment services, customer propositions, markets, partnerships, systems changes and material operating-model changes in the UAE.

• Continue to develop the UAE crisis management and resilience framework, including escalation triggers, governance, executive response mechanisms, business continuity planning and severe-but-plausible scenario exercises.

• Contribute to enterprise-wide risk initiatives, including improvements to risk reporting, dashboards, risk tools, automation and data quality, while sharing UAE insights with the global risk team.

• Support consistent risk management standards across Airwallex’s regulated entities and help ensure that local practices are aligned with the Group’s enterprise risk framework.

• Build strong relationships with local and global stakeholders, fostering a pragmatic and effective risk culture across the UAE business.

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, Economics, Business, Law, STEM, or another relevant quantitative field.

• 5 to 7+ years of experience in risk management, operational risk, enterprise risk, compliance, controls, or audit within financial services, fintech, payments, banking, or another highly regulated environment.

• Experience with defense frameworks, including risk appetite statements, risk taxonomies, governance processes, and escalation mechanisms.

• Familiarity with the UAE financial services regulatory environment, including practical exposure to the Central Bank of the UAE and requirements relevant to electronic money, Stored Value Facilities or Retail Payment Services.

• Demonstrated experience preparing risk papers and communicating effectively with executives, Board or committee audiences, regulators, or auditors, with excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• A high-ownership, pragmatic approach, with the ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced environment with evolving priorities and significant cross-functional collaboration.

  
  Preferred qualifications:

• Fintech and payments experience, including exposure to cross-border payments, merchant acquiring, card scheme environments, local payment methods, or multi-entity regulated groups.

• Experience managing risk approvals and governance in a high-velocity product and engineering environment, where new features, products, markets, or operating models are launched frequently.

• Strong data literacy and comfort using dashboards, metrics, and technology-enabled tools to support risk oversight and reporting.

• A clear bias toward automation, AI, and scalable tooling to improve issue management, reporting, and second line efficiency, paired with the judgment to balance innovation, business agility, and control effectiveness.

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.