Senior Associate, Strategy & Operations, CEO Office

About Airwallex Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. More than 676,000 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 2,300 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 to see it in full. About the team The CEO Office Strategy & Operations team partners directly with Airwallex's executive leadership on the company's most important priorities. We work across regions and functions to turn complex, ambiguous problems into clear decisions and executable plans. Our work spans market expansion, new business and product initiatives, operating model design, and other strategic priorities that require coordination across multiple parts of Airwallex. The team combines rigorous problem-solving with hands-on execution. We don’t stop at making recommendations—we work with Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Risk, Finance, Treasury, Operations, and Commercial teams to turn strategy into reality. It is a high-visibility, fast-moving environment for people who enjoy solving difficult problems, working across disciplines, and building things where the playbook does not yet exist. What you'll do As Senior Associate, Global Expansion Strategy & Operations, you will help take new Airwallex markets from strategy to launch across the Americas. You will work alongside senior members of the CEO Office and leaders across the company to answer some of the hardest questions involved in entering a new financial market: Where should we enter? How should we enter? What do we need to build? What could prevent us from launching? And how do we make each subsequent expansion faster and more scalable? This role goes beyond traditional program management. You will be expected to understand the substance behind the workstreams you support, form hypotheses, identify what is actually blocking progress, and help move complex issues toward decisions. Over time, you will develop a broad understanding of how a global financial platform is built – from regulatory strategy and product infrastructure to operations and commercial launch. This role is based in San Francisco. Responsibilities: Build market-entry strategies . Assess market attractiveness, customer opportunity, competitive dynamics, regulatory feasibility, and Airwallex’s right to win. Help develop recommendations on where we should expand and what capabilities we need to succeed. Design the market-entry model . Evaluate licensing pathways, entity structures, partnerships, and operating models. Work with Legal, Compliance, Finance, Treasury, and other teams to translate regulatory constraints into practical business and operating decisions. Translate strategy into product requirements . Partner with Product and Engineering to convert market-entry and regulatory requirements into concrete product scope, sequencing, and launch dependencies. Help ensure the roadmap reflects what is actually required to operate and scale locally. Drive cross-functional launch readiness . Own defined workstreams within market launches and work across functions to identify critical-path dependencies, surface blockers early, establish clear ownership, and drive issues toward resolution. Support go/no-go decisions across product, regulatory, operational, risk,