Manager – Financial Crime Compliance Monitoring & Testing

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 2,700 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 Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) team at Airwallex is a strategically vital function operating under a clear Three Lines of Defence model. As the independent second line, FCC owns the global AML/CTF programme, sanctions framework, risk assessment methodology, and governance infrastructure across all global entities. As Airwallex scales into new markets and deepens its engagement with global regulatory bodies, we are building a world-class compliance organization capable of managing complex financial crime risks at scale. This is an environment where you will tackle high-impact challenges, shape global fintech risk strategies, and help establish foundations for long-term growth.

What you'll do

As Manager, FCC Monitoring & Testing, EMEA you will shape and scale Airwallex’s global financial crime compliance monitoring and testing framework, establishing a rigorous, data-driven second-line assurance function. You will independently validate the design and operating effectiveness of AML, Sanctions, and KYC/KYB controls across all production environments and establish a monitoring framework and associated metrics to support executive decisioning and ongoing maintenance of program and control operating effectiveness. You will work closely with the broader FCC organization, Product, Engineering, Operations, and regional leadership to turn testing insights into operational accountability, robust remediation, and a defensible compliance posture before global regulators and institutional banking partners.

This role covers the EMEA region and is based remotely in Birmingham. In this role, you will be a key part of a global team, collaborating closely across regions to drive consistent FCC Monitoring & Testing standards.

Responsibilities:

• Contribute to the strategic development, execution, and continuous evolution of Airwallex’s Global FCC Monitoring & Testing Programme, establishing robust, risk-based testing methodologies and annual plans for independent second-line assurance.

• Design comprehensive testing frameworks to validate core compliance controls across customer onboarding, periodic reviews, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, and regulatory reporting workflows, ensuring coverage keeps pace with product and market expansion.

• Oversee the ongoing FCC monitoring program for EMEA, including establishment of KPIs and operating effectiveness metrics.

• Advance the transition from traditional sample reviews toward continuous, data-enabled assurance by leveraging data analytics, system logs, and automated testing scripts to evaluate compliance control performance at the population level.

• Oversee the independent validation of system-encoded controls, including transaction monitoring thresholds, screening logic, and customer risk-rating models, ensuring systems function as intended without logic drift or hidden control gaps.

• Translate complex testing outcomes and thematic trends into clear, decision-useful reporting for executive leadership and governance forums, providing constructive challenge to stakeholders and tracking the root-cause remediation of control deficiencies.

• Represent the FCC monitoring and testing function during regulatory examinations, internal or external audits, and banking partner reviews, confidently defending testing methodologies and control evidence.

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, Accounting, Law, Information Systems, Business Administration, or a related quantitative/analytical discipline.

• CAMS certification or an ICA International Diploma in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (or equivalent professional credential).

• 7+ years of experience within FCC quality assurance, compliance monitoring, internal audit, or a related second/third-line control function inside a fintech, payments, or highly regulated banking environment.

• Strong technical knowledge of financial crime controls across transaction monitoring, sanctions/PEP screening, customer due diligence, and digital KYC/KYB workflows.

• Proven mastery of risk-based testing methodologies, including scoping, sampling, design and operating effectiveness assessments, issue writing, and remediation validation.

• A high-ownership, pragmatic approach, with excellent written communication and stakeholder management skills to challenge senior partners constructively and drive operational accountability.

Preferred qualifications:

• Advanced degree such as an MBA, Master’s in Regulatory Compliance, Risk Management, or a related field.

• Professional assurance or audit certifications such as CAMS-Audit, CISA, or CIA.

• Strong fintech and platforms experience, including exposure to cloud-native, API-driven, high-growth global environments with significant cross-border transaction volume.

• Strong data literacy, including comfort using SQL, Python, BI dashboards, or automated tools to support continuous control validation and population-based testing.

• Experience partnering directly with Product, Data Science, and Engineering teams to validate automated rules, model-driven controls, and rapid deployments within an agile product lifecycle.

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. 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.

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.