Financial Partnerships Operations Manager, EMEA (18 months FTC)

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 https://www.airwallex.com/en-us/operating-principles to see it in full.   HOW YOU'LL MAKE IMPACT You’ll help run the day-to-day operations of Airwallex’s Financial Partnerships team across EMEA, supporting strong relationships with banking partners and other financial institutions as the business expands into new markets. - Own project coordination across partner requirements, due diligence, regulatory and scheme changes, operational requests, and cross-functional implementations. - Improve how the team operates by building scalable processes, governance mechanisms, reporting, and performance dashboards that make partner health, operational risks, and progress clear to senior stakeholders. - Partner with Product, Engineering, Treasury, Risk, Legal, Compliance, Finance, Commercial, and Operations teams to deliver changes and resolve dependencies. - Drive effective triage of partner escalations and operational requests, ensuring issues reach the right teams and are resolved effectively. - Deliver clear updates to senior stakeholders and external partners on implementation progress, operational risks, and areas for improvement. You'll work from our Vilnius office three days a week. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR ESSENTIALS - Project management experience, with a track record of coordinating complex workstreams, dependencies, deadlines, and escalations. - 5+ years of experience in financial services, fintech, payments, banking operations, strategy, business operations, partnerships, consulting, or a related field. - Experience improving processes, policies, products, or operational workflows. - Excellent attention to detail and the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment. - Strong written and verbal communication skills in English, including the ability to communicate clearly with senior stakeholders and external partners. - Strong analytical skills, including proficiency with relevant tools such as Excel, Google Sheets, Looker, or similar reporting and analysis platforms. - The ability to think critically and creatively while balancing growth, customer experience, operational effectiveness, and risk. - Experience collaborating with stakeholders across functions, regions, cultures, and levels of seniority. - The ability to work independently in a rapidly changing environment. PREFERRED - Experience in compliance or regulatory compliance. - Experience working directly with banking partners, sponsor banks, payment processors, card schemes, payment service providers, local payment methods, or other regulated financial institutions. - Familiarity with payment flows, acquiring or issuing, network rules, scheme mandates, KYC or KYB, due diligence, or technical integration processes. - Experience building scalable operating mechanisms such as governance forums, partner scorecards, dashboards, QBRs, intake processes, or global playbooks. - Experience coordinating cross-functional implementation across Product, Engineering, Treasury, Risk, Legal, Financial Crime Compliance, Finance, Commercial, and Operations teams. - Experience identifying opportunities to automate manual processes, improve partner economics, reduce operational risk, or increase the speed and quality of execution. YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF - You connect dots across functions and hold the big picture without losing grip on the details. - You enjoy working closely with people across multiple countries and time zones as part of one connected, global team, including flexing your hours occasionally to make that connection work. - You've operated in a compliance-heavy environment and know how to move fast without cutting the corners that matter. LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR TEAM Financial & Strategic Partnerships builds the relationships that expand what our platform can do and where it can go next. This team structures deals with financial institutions, fintech platforms, and enterprise software companies that embed Airwallex's infrastructure into their own products: commercially complex work that accelerates growth, opens new markets, and extends distribution reach. It's a function for strategic thinkers and dealmakers who think in systems, with range across commercial negotiation, technical scoping, and cross-functional coordination. The work is open-ended by nature, and the best outcomes come from people who thrive without an inherited playbook. If you want to identify, define, and negotiate consequential commercial relationships at the frontier of global finance, this team does the kind of work that will challenge and motivate you. 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 http://airwallex.com email address. Please apply only through careers.airwallex.com http://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.