Associate Director, Regulatory Legal, Apac

About Airwallex

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 200,000 businesses worldwide – including Brex, Rippling, 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 2,000 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 26 offices around the globe. Valued at US$8 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.

Attributes We Value

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.

About the team

Airwallex’s Regulatory Legal team is a high-impact, collaborative group that plays a central role in enabling our expansion and success across the regions we’re present in. We support Airwallex’s continued growth by providing expert legal guidance on regulatory matters, partnering closely with Product Legal, Regulatory Compliance, Financial Crime Compliance, and other teams to deliver innovative financial products compliantly and at scale. This is a fast-paced, growth-oriented environment where you’ll work alongside committed colleagues, engage in strategic projects with global reach, and have direct influence on business-critical decisions. We value curiosity, ownership, and the ambition to drive outcomes in a complex, ever-evolving regulatory landscape.

What you'll do

As Associate Director, Regulatory Legal responsible for the rapidly expanding Southeast Asia and India region, you will be a key member of the global Regulatory Legal team and a senior partner to our SEA & India business in navigating complex and evolving regulatory landscapes. You will support our regulatory strategy and advise on complex regulatory issues across Southeast Asian markets and India, working closely with stakeholders in Singapore and globally.

You will act as a steward of our licences in SEA & India, partnering with Regulatory Compliance, Risk and Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) to ensure compliance with licensing and other regulatory requirements. You will play a critical role in supporting market entry, licence applications and variations, and new product launches across the region.

This dynamic role is ideal for someone who enjoys wearing multiple hats and solving complex issues for our customers, is detail oriented, willing to take on challenges and change, obsessively curious and intellectually honest, thrives on taking action and delivering impactful results, and aims to inspire and be inspired.

This role is based in Singapore, with regional responsibility for Southeast Asia and India.

Responsibilities:

• Provide actionable regulatory advice to commercial, product, operations and compliance stakeholders on a broad range of regulatory matters across Southeast Asia and India to drive product and commercial growth.

• Identify and mitigate legal and regulatory risks while progressing business objectives, offering pragmatic, solutions‑oriented guidance.

• Support licence acquisition, maintenance and expansion efforts in key SEA markets and India, including regulatory mapping, licence strategy and engagement on applications and variations.

• Advise on manuals, policies, procedures and control frameworks to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations in the regions in which Airwallex operates, while identifying opportunities to create efficiencies and enable scale.

• Support and, where appropriate, lead regulatory engagements and maintain effective working relationships with regulators across SEA & India (for example, MAS, BNM, RBI and other relevant authorities), including in connection with inspections, thematic reviews, queries and change initiatives.

• Monitor and interpret regulatory developments in SEA & India, proactively assessing impact and advising internal stakeholders on implications for products, licences and business strategy.

• Partner closely with Product Legal, Regulatory Compliance, Risk and FCC to ensure alignment on regulatory positions, submissions and remediation plans.

• In partnership with the APAC Regulatory Legal Lead, mentor and provide guidance to more junior team members and help uplift processes, tooling and ways of working across the Regulatory Legal function.

• Select, instruct and manage external counsel to ensure high‑quality, cost‑effective advice aligned with Airwallex’s risk appetite and commercial objectives.

• Leverage AI, LegalTech and RegTech tooling to enhance the scale, efficiency and effectiveness of the Regulatory Legal team.

Who you are

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

Minimum qualifications

• Qualified lawyer with 10+ years of post‑qualification experience.

• Strong regulatory experience gained in the fintech industry, reputable law firms and/or financial institutions.

• Deep experience advising on payments, remittances, card issuing and/or FX regulatory frameworks in one or more Southeast Asian jurisdictions and/or India.

• Sound knowledge of the financial services regulatory environment in SEA & India, including experience engaging with one or more key regulators (e.g. MAS, BNM, RBI, SBV, BI, BSP or other relevant authorities).

• Demonstrated experience handling regulatory submissions, filings, licence applications and variations, and regulatory strategy.

• Strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to work effectively with a range of internal and external stakeholders, including senior business leaders and regulators.

• Proactive, results‑driven and ownership‑oriented, with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast‑paced environment.

• Strong communication and influencing skills, including the ability to explain complex regulatory topics clearly to non‑lawyers and frame commercially relevant options.

• Excellent drafting skills (in English), with high attention to detail.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with regional, cross‑border products and payment flows, including advising on cross‑border payments, FX and treasury solutions.

• Experience supporting licence applications and new market entry in one or more SEA markets and/or India.

• Experience using or deploying AI, LegalTech or RegTech tools to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of the legal function.

• Experience working with global, cross‑functional teams across time zones on complex regulatory issues.

• Additional Asian language capability (e.g. Bahasa Indonesia, Thai, Vietnamese, or other regional languages) would be an advantage but is not mandatory.

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 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.

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.