Director, Product Legal (EmFi & Payments)

Location: New York or San Francisco, United States

Company

Airwallex provides integrated payments and financial infrastructure for global businesses, including business accounts, payments, spend management, treasury, and embedded finance.

What you will do

• Lead the product-counsel team supporting Embedded Finance, Payments for Platforms, Issuing, and Lending.
• Advise Product, Enterprise Sales, Financial Partnerships, Risk, Regulatory Compliance, and Engineering on complex EmFi models and multi-jurisdictional financial regulation.
• Support enterprise deal structuring and negotiate agreements with banks, payment service providers, card networks, and other financial partners.
• Provide regulatory guidance on money transmission, AML/BSA, consumer protection, card network rules, state licensing, and bank-partner or BaaS requirements.
• Build legal playbooks, reference materials, and approved use-case repositories for Product, Commercial Legal, and Sales teams.
• Coordinate legal readiness for new products and market launches, regulatory assessments, product escalations, and regulatory exam responses.

Requirements

• JD or equivalent law degree and active bar membership in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• 10+ years of experience in payments, complex deal structuring, and financial regulation.
• Deep knowledge of U.S. payments and financial services frameworks, including money transmission, AML/BSA, Reg E, UDAAP, card network rules, and BaaS requirements.
• Experience advising product and engineering teams from ideation through launch in a fintech or financial services environment.
• Strong drafting, negotiation, and cross-functional communication skills, including communication with C-suite stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience at a top-tier law firm combined with in-house fintech, payments, or regulated technology experience.
• Experience with multi-jurisdictional launches and European payments regulation, including PSD2 or e-money frameworks.
• Experience building legal playbooks, scalable frameworks, or internal knowledge resources.
• Entrepreneurial mindset and comfort with fast iteration and evolving priorities.

Culture & Benefits

• Work with a global financial platform serving more than 250,000 businesses.
• Collaborate with teams across product, commercial, regulatory, risk, data, privacy, engineering, and global expansion functions.
• Operate in a high-ownership environment focused on customer outcomes, first-principles thinking, and continuous improvement.
• Work alongside a global organization with more than 2,300 employees across 27 offices.