Global Lead, Commercial Risk Strategy

The role

You will build and lead the first-line commercial risk function globally. You will define frameworks, guidance, and governance to help the business pursue sustainable growth through sound risk decisions.

What you will do

• Own the commercial risk strategy and supportability frameworks for customers and use cases.
• Drive structured guidance for complex or high-risk merchant opportunities.
• Translate second-line risk appetite and policies into practical commercial playbooks, controls and operating processes.
• Build continuous portfolio monitoring for risk tiers, fraud or loss rates, revenue concentration and risk-adjusted commercial performance.
• Lead incident post-mortems, root-cause analysis, remediation and governance across multiple lines of defense.
• Partner with Sales, Partnerships, Account Management, Revenue Strategy & Operations, Data, Legal, Risk and Compliance.

Required qualifications

• 10–12 years of risk management experience within financial services.
• Significant experience in first-line or business-aligned roles interfacing directly with front-office or Sales teams.
• Deep expertise in at least two of the following: credit and portfolio risk, payments or merchant risk, operational and conduct risk, or enterprise risk.
• Track record of designing and implementing practical risk frameworks within a Three Lines of Defense model.
• Strong analytical and data literacy to define KPIs and interrogate dashboards.
• Exceptional communication skills to translate complex risk concepts into clear commercial language.
• Experience defining commercial risk strategy and supportability frameworks for complex or high-risk customers or use cases.
• Experience translating risk appetite and policies into practical playbooks, controls and operating processes.
• Experience designing portfolio monitoring frameworks and tracking indicators.
• Experience leading incident post-mortems, root-cause analysis, remediation and governance across multiple lines of defense.
• Experience partnering with senior commercial, revenue operations, data, legal, risk and compliance stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience in a high-growth, product-led fintech environment, particularly in payments, issuing, FX or modern banking.
• Familiarity with global regulatory and scheme frameworks including KYC/AML, sanctions, card network rules and data privacy.
• Experience designing portfolio early-warning indicators, concentration limits and stress testing.
• Experience recruiting and developing a high-impact risk team with global coverage.

About the company

Airwallex is an AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. It provides financial infrastructure for over 675,000 businesses globally.