Merchant Risk Underwriter Jobs (NOW HIRING)

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, 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.

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. 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.

The Credit Risk team is part of Airwallex's Second Line of Defence and helps the company grow responsibly as a global financial platform. We work at the intersection of credit, FX, and counterparty risk, partnering closely with Product, Sales, Operations, Treasury, Finance, Engineering, Compliance, and Legal to enable commercial growth while protecting Airwallex from financial loss and excessive risk exposure. This is a team for analytical, commercially minded risk leaders who are energized by building scalable frameworks and practical controls across a fast-moving, multi-currency global network.

As Director, Credit Risk, you will lead Airwallex's global second-line oversight of credit, FX, and counterparty risk. You will set the risk guardrails that allow the business to grow safely across merchant acquiring, charge cards, FX, treasury, settlement, and banking-partner activities. Reporting to the Senior Director, Financial Risk, you will own the global framework, risk appetite, limits, governance, and portfolio oversight for these risk areas. You will provide independent challenge to first-line decisions and act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders across the business. This role is based in New York or San Francisco.

• Credit risk framework and risk appetite: Define, implement, and continuously enhance the global second-line credit risk framework, including policies, risk appetite thresholds, limits, escalation protocols, and governance standards across Airwallex's products and legal entities.
• Credit portfolio oversight: Oversee credit exposures across merchant acquiring, charge cards, B2B and commercial activities, FX pre-funding, treasury-related exposures, settlement flows, and other relevant products.
• Underwriting and limit governance: Review and challenge first-line underwriting strategies, customer and merchant risk policies, credit assessments, limit-setting methodologies, and exception processes. Act as a senior escalation point for complex or high-value credit decisions.
• FX risk oversight: Establish and monitor appropriate second-line guardrails for FX exposures arising from pre-funding, settlement, customer activity, treasury flows, and other multi-currency activities. Challenge controls, limits, escalation triggers, and risk reporting to ensure exposures remain within approved tolerances.
• Counterparty risk management: Set and oversee counterparty risk standards for banking partners, payment partners, merchants, customers, and other material counterparties. Establish appropriate exposure limits, concentration thresholds, monitoring requirements, and escalation processes.
• Portfolio monitoring and early warning indicators: Lead proactive monitoring of credit, FX, and counterparty portfolios, including exposure, concentration, delinquency, default, chargeback, loss, settlement, liquidity-of-counterparty, and other relevant risk indicators. Identify emerging trends and escalate material issues before they become systemic.
• Loss mitigation and remediation: Review and challenge first-line monitoring, collections, collateral, prefunding, reserves, chargeback, and other mitigation strategies. Ensure deteriorating counterparties, customers, merchants, or exposures are identified and addressed promptly.
• New products and market expansion: Partner with Product, Engineering, Commercial, Treasury, Finance, and Operations to assess and challenge the risk design of new products, features, markets, currencies, and partner arrangements before launch.
• Risk approvals and governance: Lead or support risk committee decisions, material risk approvals, limit exceptions, breach assessments, and remediation plans. Ensure decisions are documented clearly and aligned with approved risk appetite.
• Regulatory and partner engagement: Represent Credit Risk during regulatory examinations, internal and external audits, and reviews with banking and strategic partners. Prepare clear, decision-useful materials for senior management, risk committees, and the Board where appropriate.

We're looking for people who meet the minimum requirements for this role. The preferred qualifications are great to have, but are not mandatory.

• 10–15 years of progressively senior experience across credit risk, counterparty risk, FX risk, treasury risk, or related financial risk disciplines within banking, payments, fintech, or another highly regulated financial services environment.
• Deep experience designing, implementing, and governing second-line credit risk frameworks in a complex, multi-jurisdictional organization.
• Strong understanding of credit risk identification, measurement, underwriting, limit management, monitoring, mitigation, provisioning, loss recognition, and capital implications.
• Demonstrated experience managing risk across multiple product lines, such as merchant acquiring, commercial or charge cards, B2B lending, payment processing, FX, treasury, settlement, or banking-partner activities.
• Practical experience overseeing FX and counterparty risk, including exposure measurement, concentration risk, limits, settlement risk, prefunding, collateral or other mitigants, and escalation governance.
• Proven ability to challenge first-line decisions and communicate clear risk positions to senior executives, commercial leaders, product and operations teams, banking partners, auditors, and regulators.

• Advanced degree such as an MBA or Master's in Finance, Economics, Risk Management, or a related field.
• Professional certification such as FRM, PRM, CFA, or an equivalent qualification.
• Experience with automated decisioning engines, credit scoring models, portfolio analytics, or alternative data used in underwriting and monitoring.
• Familiarity with IFRS 9, expected credit loss methodologies, stress testing, or other relevant prudential and accounting frameworks.
• Strong data literacy and familiarity with SQL, Python, or similar tools used to analyze portfolio, exposure, and loss trends.
• Experience working in a regulated payments fintech, digital bank, or financial institution with multiple licenses and banking partnerships.
• Comfort operating in a high-growth environment with evolving priorities and a bias for practical, scalable execution.

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.

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