Associate Director, FCC Models & Product Risk

ABOUT AIRWALLEX Airwallex is the only unified payments and financial platform for global businesses. Powered by our unique combination of proprietary infrastructure and software, we empower over 250,000 businesses worldwide – including Brex, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more – with fully integrated solutions to manage everything from business accounts, payments, spend management and treasury, to embedded finance at a global scale. Proudly founded in Melbourne, we have a team of over 2,300 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 27 offices around the globe. Valued at US$11 billion and backed by world-leading investors including T. Rowe Price, Visa, Mastercard, Robinhood Ventures, Sequoia, Salesforce Ventures, DST Global, and Lone Pine Capital, Airwallex is leading the charge in building the global payments and financial platform of the future. If you’re ready to do the most ambitious work of your career, join us. ATTRIBUTES WE VALUE We hire successful builders with founder-like energy who want real impact, accelerated learning, and true ownership. You bring strong role-related expertise and sharp thinking, and you’re motivated by our mission and operating principles https://www.airwallex.com/us/operating-principles. You move fast with good judgment, dig deep with curiosity, and make decisions from first principles, balancing speed and rigor. You're humble and collaborative; turn zero‑to‑one ideas into real products, and you “get stuff done” end-to-end. You use AI to work smarter and solve problems faster. Here, you’ll tackle complex, high‑visibility problems with exceptional teammates and grow your career as we build the future of global banking. If that sounds like you, let’s build what’s next. 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 This role sits within the AML & Sanctions, Governance & Policy pillar of the FCC organization and serves as a critical bridge between regulatory intent and technical execution. In this role, you will serve as the global second-line authority and owner of financial crime detection models, risk analytics, and automated control frameworks. You will own the global methodology, thresholds, and data-scoring models used to identify and mitigate financial crime typologies, be accountable for model governance and liaison with Model Risk Management, and partner with Product Risk and CDO counterparts on technical control deployments as well as the FCC Investigations and FIU team for feedback loops on coverage and tuning optimization. This is a highly quantitative, technically fluent leadership position requiring deep comfort with production logic, automated systems, and data science architectures, balanced with a strong understanding of global AML/Sanctions compliance frameworks and data requirements. This role can be based in the US or EMEA. Responsibilities: - Lead the global design and implementation of risk assessment methodologies and quantitative detection models for all financial crime typologies, including money laundering, sanctions circumvention, and behavioral anomalies. - Own the quantitative architecture of Airwallex's automated customer risk-rating engines and corporate screening matrices, ensuring behavioral data, risk vectors, and corporate structures are weighted dynamically in real time. - Tr…