Engineering Director, Org & Identity

Airwallex; Singapore; On-site; SGD 300,000 - 420,000; Full time

Job summary

Airwallex, a global AI-native financial operating system, is seeking an Engineering Director to lead the Organization & Identity foundation, covering onboarding, authentication, access control, and org modeling. You will set the technical direction and own the strategy for scalable, secure foundations that underpin our products.

You will build and coach a high-performing team, partnering with Product, Risk, Compliance, and Onboarding, balancing speed with reliability as Airwallex expands

Qualifications

• Significant experience leading engineering teams for identity, authentication, or access control.
• Deep expertise in building scalable, secure distributed systems.
• Ability to translate security and product needs into engineering priorities.
• Track record of hiring and developing high-performing teams.
• Experience partnering with product, risk, compliance, and onboarding.
• Strong judgment balancing speed, security and maintainability.
• Clear, direct communication at technical and executive levels.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the engineering strategy for identity and org foundations.
• Own technical direction for highly available, scalable systems.
• Translate complex requirements into platform capabilities with cross-functional partners.
• Build and develop a high-performing engineering team.
• Raise the bar on architecture, reliability, and security.
• Balance delivery speed with long-term maintainability.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Identity & access

Distributed systems

Technical strategy

Cross-functional collaboration

People management

Communication

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.

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.

How you'll make impact

As Engineering Director, you’ll lead the engineering strategy and execution for Airwallex’s core identity and organization foundations, spanning user onboarding, authentication, access control, organization modeling, account ownership, and organization-level workflows.

• Own the technical direction for highly available, scalable, and secure systems that provide a unified identity and organization foundation for Airwallex’s products.

• Drive the translation of complex identity, security, and organizational requirements into reliable platform capabilities, partnering closely with Product, Design, Risk, Compliance, and Onboarding.

• Build and develop a high-performing engineering team through hiring, coaching, performance management, and organizational design.

• Raise the bar for engineering excellence across architecture, delivery, operational reliability, and security.

• Balance delivery speed, system reliability, security, operational complexity, and long-term maintainability as the team evolves its platform foundations.

What we're looking for

Essentials

• Significant experience leading engineering teams responsible for identity, authentication, authorization, account management, or other foundational platform capabilities.

• Strong technical depth in designing and operating highly available, scalable, and secure distributed systems.

• Experience setting technical strategy and translating ambiguous business, product, and security needs into clear engineering priorities.

• A track record of building and developing high-performing engineering teams, including through hiring, coaching, performance management, and organizational design.

• Experience partnering effectively with product, design, risk, compliance, and other cross-functional stakeholders.

• Strong judgment in balancing delivery speed, system reliability, security, operational complexity, and long-term maintainability.

• Clear, direct communication and the ability to influence at both technical and executive levels.

Preferred

You’ll thrive here if

• You're comfortable owning the roadmap yourself.

• You own the outcome and you don't wait for permission to fix what's broken.

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

• You communicate clearly and directly across cultures, and you're thoughtful about how context shifts meaning across borders.

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

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

Learn more about your team

The Organization & Identity team is responsible for building and evolving Airwallex's core identity and organization foundations, covering user onboarding, authentication and access control through to organization-structure modeling, account-ownership management, and org-level workflow enablement. We continuously strengthen platform availability, scalability, and security so all products can depend on a unified, trusted identity and organization base. Our team owns identity, authN, authZ, and the technical capabilities behind identity verification, and partners closely with Risk, Compliance and Onboarding on broader controls.

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.