Product Finance Director

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 https://www.airwallex.com/en-us/operating-principles to see it in full.   ABOUT THE ROLE As Director of Product Finance, you will own the accounting, reconciliation, and financial governance layer that sits at the heart of Airwallex's core product suite, covering payments, issuing, acquiring, FX, intercompany flows, and our wallet infrastructure. This is a high-impact, cross-functional role that sits at the intersection of finance, product, and technology. You will be the primary finance partner for Product, Engineering, and Treasury teams, ensuring that every new product launch, fund flow design, and revenue model is built on a sound accounting and controls foundation from day one. At the same time, you will lead the transformation of reconciliation operations through AI and automation, moving the team from largely manual processes toward scalable, technology-first financial operations. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES: - Drive AI adoption and automation in reconciliation: Lead the implementation of AI-based reconciliation tools and automated workflows across cash, intercompany, AR, and treasury operations. - Product accounting ownership: Serve as the primary accounting authority for all product-related fund flows, payment clearing, issuing revenue, acquiring settlements, rebate netting, FX revaluation and intercompany rebalancing. Ensure accounting treatment is documented, reviewed, and consistently applied across entities. - Fee governance and revenue integrity: Own the accounting treatment sign-off process for all new fee types and revenue models. Design and maintain a structured governance framework (with audit trail) for accounting decisions on commercial arrangements, ensuring alignment with US GAAP group standards and local requirements. - Reconciliation operations leadership: Lead the reconciliation and financial operations team, ensuring bank statement access, break resolution, and close-related recon tasks are executed accurately and on time. Drive the team toward T+3 close standards and measurable reduction in open breaks. - Financial Risk Monitoring: Provide monitoring metric for financial risk committee on AR balances and credit risk exposures. - Cost Engine Build-Up: Lead the design and build-out of a scalable cost engine to support cost accruals and reconciliation. Define cost drivers, allocation logic, data sources, and calculation methodologies in collaboration with Product and Engineering teams. - FR and MR Topline Reconciliation Own the reconciliation and continuous improvement of Financial Reporting and Management Reporting topline figures, ensuring consistency between the two outputs, including driving initiatives to bridge the gaps. - Product partnership: Engage early with Product, Engineering, and Legal on new product launches, feature changes, and fund flow redesigns to ensure finance requirements (accounting, controls, reporting, regulatory) are built in from the start. - FX Hub and treasury infrastructure: Support the operationalization of a new FX Hub and related intercompany structures. Lead the accounting design for back-to-back hedge arrangements.. - Systems and data quality: Maintain accountability for ledger data quality underpinning reconciliation (e.g. Oracle movement types, BAM records, Leapfin domain tagging). Drive resolution of structural data issues with Engineering and Ops counterparts. WHAT YOU BRING: - Experience: 10+ years of progressive finance experience, with meaningful exposure to payments, fintech, or financial infrastructure businesses. Prior product finance, technical accounting, or financial operations leadership experience is strongly preferred;. - Qualifications: Master's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field; CA/CPA or equivalent professional certification is preferred. - Technical aptitude: A builder's mindset with genuine interest in AI and automation tools. Comfort with data concepts, SQL, or scripting is a plus. Demonstrated ability to work with Engineering and Product teams to solve finance problems through technology rather than headcount. - Product accounting depth: Strong working knowledge of payment product accounting including clearing, settlement, FX revaluation, intercompany and revenue recognition. The ability to design accounting frameworks for novel product structures with limited precedent. - Leadership: Experienced people manager, able to develop a team of managers and individual contributors, build clear ownership, and foster a high-performance culture that prizes quality, speed, and continuous improvement. - Stakeholder management: Comfortable operating as a peer to Product, Engineering, and Treasury leaders. Able to influence decisions without authority and communicate complex accounting positions clearly to non-finance audiences. 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 fo…