Associate Director, Strategy & Operations - CEO Office

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.   About the team The CEO Office works directly with Airwallex’s executive leadership on some of the company’s most important strategic, operational, and organisational priorities. This is a small, high-trust team responsible for solving complex, company-critical problems across global expansion, product strategy, financial infrastructure, organisational scaling, and AI transformation. The team helps leadership navigate ambiguity, accelerate execution, and drive alignment across the company during periods of rapid growth and change. Airwallex is building the global financial infrastructure for modern businesses. With operations spanning multiple continents and rapid growth across payments, banking, software, and AI-enabled financial products, the company is entering a critical phase of global scale and platform expansion. This role offers close exposure to senior leadership, direct involvement in high-stakes decision-making, and the opportunity to work on some of the hardest scaling challenges inside a global fintech platform. What you’ll do As part of the CEO Office, you will work closely with Airwallex’s leadership team on high-priority initiatives that shape the direction of the company globally. You will operate across strategy and execution: helping frame problems, drive alignment, and ensure complex initiatives move from idea to outcome. Projects may include: - Scaling new products and business lines globally - International expansion and market entry strategy - Regulatory and banking infrastructure initiatives - Organisational effectiveness and operating model design - Commercial acceleration and go-to-market execution - M&A evaluation and post-merger integration - AI-enabled operational transformation - Cross-functional strategic initiatives tied to company priorities You will regularly work with senior leaders across product, engineering, finance, commercial, legal, operations, and regional teams. This role is best suited to someone who thrives in high-context, high-accountability environments and is excited by solving difficult problems with imperfect information. The pace is fast, expectations are high, and the problems are often ambiguous, but the learning curve and opportunity for impact are exceptional. The role is designed for individuals who want to accelerate their development and take on increasingly broad leadership responsibility over time. Who you are You are intellectually curious, highly structured in your thinking, and execution-oriented. You are comfortable operating in ambiguity and able to move fluidly between strategic thinking and practical problem solving. You are someone who: - Learns quickly and enjoys steep learning curves - Communicates clearly and concisely - Has strong business judgment - Can balance detail orientation with speed - Is comfortable with high expectations and high ownership - Enjoys building rather than observing Mini