Director, Product Legal (EmFi & Payments) Legal Legal • New York Americas , New York New York

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 2,300 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.

How you'll make impact

Product Legal is an embedded partner to Airwallex’s product organization, helping shape regulated financial products from early ideation through launch. In this role, you’ll lead the legal support for Embedded Finance, Lending, Issuing, and Payments for Platforms while staying close to the highest-impact product and commercial matters.

• Lead the product-legal team supporting Embedded Finance, Lending, Issuing, and Payments for Platforms, managing two direct reports while remaining closely involved in the highest-impact matters.

• Structure novel Embedded Finance and Lending models for strategic enterprise customers, partnering with Enterprise Sales, Product, Financial Partnerships, Risk, Regulatory Compliance, Engineering, and bank partners.

• Provide practical, risk-weighted guidance on U.S. and international payments and financial services laws, including money transmission, AML/BSA, Reg E, UDAAP, card network rules, state licensing, and bank-partner and BaaS requirements.

• Advise Product and Engineering from early ideation through PRD review, regulatory structuring, terms drafting, and go-to-market readiness for new products and markets.

• Draft, review, and negotiate financial partnership agreements and platform terms and conditions with banks, payment processors, card networks, and other financial partners, including managing terms updates across jurisdictions.

• Build scalable legal playbooks, approved use-case repositories, and reference materials that help Product, Commercial Legal, and Sales move faster on recurring deal patterns.

• Coordinate with Regulatory Legal, Data & Privacy, Risk, FCC, Commercial Legal, Global Expansion & Licensing, and regional product legal leads on product launches, GRC escalations, and regulatory exam responses.

• Serve as the U.S.-based point person for Embedded Finance, own the Lending portfolio, provide secondary support for Issuing, and help the Product Legal team scale its impact beyond one-to-one deal support.

• Help Airwallex deliver Product Legal Readiness for prioritized launches across markets including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the UAE.

• Support customer-facing legal-to-legal discussions and bring deep fintech regulatory credibility to complex commercial opportunities.

You'll work from our San Francisco or New York office on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

What we're looking for

Essentials

• A JD or equivalent law degree and active bar membership in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.

• 10+ years of legal experience in payments, fintech, financial services, or a closely related regulated industry, including substantial in-house experience.

• Deep expertise in U.S. payments and financial services regulation, including money transmission, AML/BSA, Reg E, UDAAP, card network rules, state licensing, and bank-partner or BaaS program requirements.

• A strong fintech lens and the ability to make sound decisions when regulations are evolving, fact patterns are novel, and information is incomplete.

• Experience serving as an embedded legal partner to Product and Engineering teams from ideation through launch in a fast-moving fintech or financial services environment.

• A track record of structuring and negotiating complex agreements with banks, payment processors, card networks, or other financial partners.

• Strong drafting skills, including financial partnership agreements, platform terms and conditions, consumer terms, and related product documentation.

• The ability to translate complex technical and regulatory matters into clear, practical advice for business partners and senior stakeholders.

• Experience leading, mentoring, or developing lawyers or other legal professionals, with the judgment to balance people leadership and hands-on product counseling.

• A collaborative, commercially minded approach to partnering with Sales, Product, Financial Partnerships, Risk, Compliance, Engineering, and other cross-functional teams.

Preferred

• Experience at a top-tier law firm combined with in-house experience at a fintech, payments company, or technology company offering regulated financial products.

• Experience with multi-jurisdictional product launches, including European payments regulation such as PSD2 and e-money frameworks.

• Experience with Visa or Mastercard rules, issuing programs, consumer financial products, regulatory exams, or bank-partner audits.

• A track record of building legal playbooks, scalable frameworks, or internal knowledge resources that reduce friction and accelerate product development.

• Experience supporting embedded finance, Payments for Platforms, Lending, or Issuing products.

• Comfort using legal technology or AI tools to improve legal workflows.

You'll thrive here if

• You're comfortable owning the roadmap yourself.

• You own the outcome and you don't wait for permission to fix what's broken.

• You're comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and moving quickly anyway.

• You communicate clearly and directly across cultures, and you're thoughtful about how context shifts meaning across borders.

• You can advocate hard for a position, then fully support the team's direction once a call is made.

Learn more about your team

Legal sits at the heart of the decisions that shape how Airwallex grows. This team backs the builders transforming us into a generational financial company, working alongside product, sales, and business partners every step of the way. You'll help shape a global licensing footprint most fintechs wish they had, while keeping our brand and data architecture best-in-class for customers entering the agentic economy and its regulatory demands. The hard part is helping the business move fast on product, revenue, and new-market expansion without compromising the discipline that protects the moat.

It's a team for lawyers, strategists, and licensing specialists with commercial instincts, sharp judgment, and an obsession with customer-first outcomes. If you want to guide executive decisions and help build the licensing, structure, and judgment behind what comes next, this is where legal has real leverage.

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.