Senior Manager, Regulatory Strategy & Operations

Airwallex; Greater London; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Airwallex is seeking a Senior Manager, Regulatory Strategy & Operations, EMEA. You will turn regulatory priorities into coordinated delivery across the EMEA business, working with Regulatory Operations, Compliance, Legal, Risk, Financial Crime, Product, Engineering, Finance and Operations.

You will build governance, ownership, and execution discipline to enable growth. You will coordinate regulatory programmes, examinations and audits, and report progress with dashboards and decision-ready

Qualifications

• Experience leading complex regulatory or transformation programmes.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional initiatives in international organisations.
• Strong planning, governance, risk and delivery-tracking skills.
• Ability to turn strategy into executable delivery plans.
• Experience influencing senior stakeholders across functions and geographies.
• Excellent written and oral communication for executive materials.

Responsibilities

• Drive end-to-end delivery of strategic regulatory programmes across EMEA.
• Translate priorities into plans with milestones, owners and outcomes.
• Coordinate cross-functional initiatives across Regulatory Ops, Compliance, Legal and more.
• Establish governance for complex programmes with committees and risk management.
• Facilitate delivery while maintaining clear ownership across functions.
• Coordinate regulatory examinations, inspections, audits and information requests.
• Define and monitor programme metrics and leadership dashboards.
• Prepare decision-ready papers for senior leadership.
• Capture lessons learned to improve future delivery.

Skills

Strategic programme leadership

Regulatory and compliance

Cross-functional coordination

Stakeholder management

Project governance

Regulatory examinations/audits

Communication at executive level

Education

Business/finance/law/risk/compliance/operations or PM qualification

Job description

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.

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 2,300 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 Regulatory & Compliance team helps Airwallex grow responsibly as a global financial platform. We work at the intersection of law, regulation, risk, and business execution, partnering closely with teams across the company to navigate complexity, enable growth, and protect the trust our customers, partners, and regulators place in us. It’s a team for people who are thoughtful, practical, and energized by solving hard problems in a fast-moving, highly regulated environment.

What You'll Do

This is a high-impact role within Airwallex’s Regulatory Legal & Compliance organisation. As Senior Manager, Regulatory Strategy & Operations, EMEA, you will help turn strategic regulatory priorities into coordinated, measurable delivery across our EMEA business.

You will work closely with Regulatory Operations, Regulatory Compliance, Regulatory Legal, Risk, Financial Crime Compliance, Product, Engineering, Finance and Operations. You will bring structure to complex initiatives, align stakeholders across functions and geographies, and help build the operating models, governance and execution discipline required to support Airwallex’s continued growth.

Responsibilities

• Drive the end-to-end delivery of strategic regulatory projects across EMEA, from defining the problem and developing the approach through implementation, tracking and benefits realisation.
• Translate strategic priorities into clear plans, milestones, dependencies, decision points, owners and measurable outcomes.
• Coordinate cross-team and cross-functional initiatives involving Regulatory Operations, Regulatory Compliance, Regulatory Legal, Risk, Financial Crime Compliance, Product, Engineering, Finance, Operations and other business teams.
• Establish effective governance for complex programmes, including steering committees, working groups, status reporting, risk management, issue escalation and decision tracking.
• Work with Regulatory Operations, Regulatory Compliance and Regulatory Legal to facilitate effective delivery of key regulatory programmes, while maintaining clear ownership across each function.
• Help strengthen the interfaces between Regulatory Legal, which advises on the legal and regulatory requirements, Regulatory Compliance, which focuses on how Airwallex operationalises those requirements, and the first-line business teams responsible for execution.
• Coordinate preparation for regulatory examinations, inspections, audits, information requests and supervisory engagements, including timelines, evidence gathering, stakeholder alignment and follow-up actions.
• Identify operational bottlenecks, duplicated activity, unclear accountabilities and delivery risks, and develop practical recommendations to improve efficiency, consistency and scalability.
• Define and monitor programme metrics, delivery dashboards and management information that provide senior leaders with a clear view of progress, risks, dependencies and regulatory readiness.
• Prepare concise, decision-ready papers, presentations, dashboards and recommendations for senior leadership and governance forums.
• Facilitate senior stakeholder discussions, resolve competing priorities and ensure decisions result in clear action and follow-through.
• Capture lessons learned from regulatory programmes, examinations, audits, monitoring activity and regulatory interactions, and use them to improve future delivery.
• Act as a trusted strategic partner to the Regulatory leadership team, bringing structured problem-solving, sound judgment and a strong bias toward execution.

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

• Significant experience leading complex strategic, regulatory, compliance, risk, transformation or operational programmes.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating cross-functional initiatives across a matrixed, international organisation.
• Strong project management skills, including programme planning, governance, dependency management, risk management, issue resolution and delivery tracking.
• Proven ability to structure ambiguous problems, develop practical recommendations and translate strategy into executable plans.
• Experience working with senior stakeholders and influencing outcomes across functions and geographies.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including experience preparing executive-level materials and presenting complex issues clearly.
• Strong analytical skills and attention to detail, with the ability to synthesise regulatory, operational and commercial information into clear decisions and actions.
• Ability to work independently, take ownership and maintain momentum across multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment.
• A pragmatic, collaborative and low-ego approach to working with Legal, Compliance, Operations, Product, Engineering, Risk and other business teams.
• Experience in financial services, payments, fintech, technology or another highly regulated industry.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience as a strategy or management consultant, or in a comparable internal strategy, transformation or programme management role.
• Experience delivering regulatory change, compliance transformation, licensing, market-entry, regulatory engagement or operating-model initiatives.
• Familiarity with regulatory obligations, controls, regulatory reporting, governance, risk frameworks or GRC tooling.
• Experience working with Regulatory Operations, Regulatory Compliance and Regulatory Legal teams to deliver regulatory programmes.
• Experience supporting regulatory examinations, audits, information requests or supervisory engagements.
• Experience partnering with Product, Engineering, Data or Operations teams to improve processes or implement automation.
• Experience in a global payments, cross-border payments, electronic money, banking, digital assets or other financial services environment.
• Relevant qualification in business, finance, economics, law, risk, compliance, operations or project management.

Applicant Safety Policy: Fraud and Third-Party Recruiters

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. 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.

Equal opportunity

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.