Manager, Operations Strategy (Data and AI Governance)

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.

Airwallex’s Data Access Governance Program has significant deliverables planned for the end of 2026, and this role will be the operational engine that turns governance strategy into execution. You’ll work at the intersection of program management and operations strategy, coordinating teams across Information Security, Engineering, IT, Legal, Data, and Operations.

• Own end-to-end program management for cross-functional data and AI governance initiatives, running sprints, tracking deliverables, and reporting progress to steering committees through regular updates and calls.
• Align stakeholders across technical and non-technical teams on governance strategy, priorities, sequencing, decisions, and dependencies.
• Assess access-control models, data classification frameworks, tagging approaches, and governance standards to ensure they address the risks they are intended to manage without creating unnecessary friction for the business.
• Translate data and AI governance requirements into operational processes, including access management, access reviews, technical hardening, approval flows, and ongoing compliance activities.
• Drive requirements and design documents through development, review, and approval, while coordinating technical deep dives across systems such as Okta, Databricks, and back-office tools.
• Define and track success metrics, maintain a living AI model and use-case inventory, and partner with Legal to translate regulatory requirements into actionable policy and process.

You’ll work from our San Francisco office three days a week.

• 5+ years of experience, preferably in a fast-growing technology company, top-tier strategy or management consulting, or an equivalent environment.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing skills, especially with Engineering, Legal, Security, and other senior stakeholders.
• Experience with data governance initiatives, including data tagging, classification, ownership, or related governance frameworks.
• Experience coordinating access-management initiatives, reviewing access to sensitive data, identifying risks, and driving remediation.
• Demonstrated ability to run programs end to end, including sprint facilitation, dependency mapping, progress reporting, and cross-functional alignment.
• Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the ability to synthesise complex information and communicate it clearly to technical and executive audiences.
• A self-starter mindset, with the ability to identify and prioritise opportunities.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent.

• Experience interpreting and operationalising requirements from regulators in a financial services or payments environment.
• Experience with AI governance best practices and frameworks.
• Experience operationalising privacy and AI regulations into actionable requirements, with related certifications such as CIPP or AIGP.
• Familiarity with identity and access-management tools such as Okta and modern data platforms such as Databricks.
• Experience in technology, financial services, or a high-growth environment.
• Experience with access-control frameworks such as RBAC and ABAC, privacy operations, data lifecycle management, or SQL and data querying.
• Comfort operating in environments with high standards, fast iteration cycles, and evolving priorities.

• You're comfortable owning the roadmap yourself.
• You're comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and moving quickly anyway.
• You connect dots across functions and hold the big picture without losing grip on the details.
• You simplify complexity rather than hiding behind it.
• You over-communicate by design. You'd rather flag something early than let it become a surprise.

Operations at Airwallex is where global ambition gets translated into systems that actually hold at scale.

This team runs the high-stakes flows businesses depend on — payments, accounts, and cross-border transactions. The work sits at the intersection of product, compliance, and customer experience. The problems are rarely simple: balancing speed with rigor, global consistency with local reality, and immediate execution with the stronger systems a growing company needs next.

It's a function for operators with a builder mentality: trusted to take ownership, work cross-functionally with product and risk, and create new processes for things that have not existed before.

If you want to help build the operational backbone of a global financial platform, this is work that keeps the whole machine moving.

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 interv