Americas Operations Strategy Lead

Airwallex; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Airwallex in San Francisco is seeking an Associate Director, Operations Strategy to own and scale the operational backbone of Airwallex's Americas business, spanning financial operations, enterprise readiness, and process improvement. You will lead a team responsible for resolving complex payment and settlement issues and enable the commercial teams to configure and launch customers rapidly.

The role partners daily with Solution Engineers, Commercial teams, Financial Partnerships, Product, and

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in operations, strategy, or program management within a fast-growing technology, fintech, or payments company, or at a top-tier strategy/management consulting firm.
• 2+ years of people management experience, with a demonstrated ability to build, lead, and develop high-performing teams.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to align cross-functional partners around shared outcomes.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a data-driven approach to identifying root causes, measuring operational performance, and prioritizing improvements.
• Excellent written and verbal communication and presentation skills, including the ability to synthesize complex operational issues and communicate them clearly to both technical and executive audiences.
• Self-starter who can identify and prioritize opportunities in ambiguous environments, drive clarity where none exists, and deliver results independently.

Responsibilities

• Lead and oversee financial operations workstreams including payment and deposit investigations, settlement exceptions, banking-partner escalations, recalls, wallet adjustments, and transaction exception handling across Americas platforms.
• Drive client enablement by partnering with commercial teams to configure customer accounts, enable products and capabilities, manage non-standard pricing, and resolve operational onboarding issues that block revenue activation.
• Own enterprise customer readiness by coordinating go-live checklists, operational readiness reviews, support model design, payment configuration, billing, pricing, and post-sale handoffs to ensure seamless launches for strategic accounts.
• Improve operational processes and service quality by redesigning SOPs, increasing straight-through processing rates, enhancing customer experience, strengthening incident handling and escalation frameworks, managing partner migrations, and building operational controls across Americas platforms.
• Work across functions (Product, Engineering, Financial Partnerships, Commercial, Customer Support) to ensure stakeholder alignment, map dependencies, and deliver desired outcomes on strategic initiatives.
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of operations professionals, setting clear objectives, running performance calibrations, and building a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and operational excellence.

Skills

Stakeholder management

Analytical skills

Data-driven

Communication

Leadership

Job description

Airwallex in San Francisco is seeking an Associate Director, Operations Strategy to own and scale the operational backbone of Airwallex's Americas business, spanning financial operations, enterprise readiness, and process improvement. You will lead a team responsible for resolving complex payment and settlement issues and enable the commercial teams to configure and launch customers rapidly.

The role partners daily with Solution Engineers, Commercial teams, Financial Partnerships, Product, and