Director, Corporate Legal

About the Role The Director, Corporate Legal at Airwallex will serve as the senior transactions lead within Corporate Legal, owning the full lifecycle of high‑impact corporate transactions globally. You will shape capital structure, governance, and the company's cross‑border deals, working closely with executive leadership and cross‑functional teams. This hybrid role is based in San Francisco or New York. What You'll Do

• Lead as primary internal counsel on private company fundraising and financing transactions (equity and equity‑linked), including term sheet development, drafting and negotiating definitive agreements, coordinating due diligence and driving transactions to close.
• Partner closely with the Corporate Development & Investor Relations team on fundraising strategy, investor due diligence, data room management, disclosure, and ongoing investor rights and governance matters across multiple rounds and instruments.
• Lead end‑to‑end legal execution of domestic and cross‑border M&A and strategic transactions, including acquisitions of licensed fintech entities and other strategic assets: structuring, documentation, regulatory and licensing considerations, closing mechanics and post‑closing integration support.
• Advise on and structure secondary sales and other private‑company liquidity programs for existing shareholders, employees and early investors, including transfer restrictions, ROFR/ROFO mechanics and stakeholder approvals, in close partnership with the Company Secretary and People teams.
• Provide expert advice on corporate governance, intragroup structuring, internal reorganisations and corporate actions (including capital raising and board/committee matters), ensuring our global entity and ownership structure effectively supports licensing, tax, regulatory and commercial objectives.
• Collaborate with Regulatory Legal, Regulatory Compliance, FCC, Product Legal, Data & Privacy and Risk to ensure transactions are designed and executed in a way that preserves our licenses, meets regulatory expectations and aligns with our risk appetite.
• Select, manage and direct external counsel across multiple jurisdictions, holding them to a high bar on quality, commerciality, speed and cost, while ensuring consistent legal positions and documentation standards.
• Build and improve scalable transaction processes, playbooks, templates and approval frameworks for Corporate Legal, thoughtfully leveraging LegalTech and AI tools to increase speed, consistency and deal capacity. What We're Looking For
• U.S. legal qualification (or foreign equivalent) and active license to practice in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• 10+ years of experience in an in‑house legal department and/or in private practice advising on private company financing and mergers and acquisitions, with a strong track record running transactions end‑to‑end.
• Significant experience drafting and negotiating core transaction documentation for equity financings, M&A, joint ventures and secondary sales (including term sheets, purchase/merger agreements, shareholder and investor rights agreements, and ancillary documents).
• Strong working knowledge of U.S. corporate and securities law as applied to private companies, particularly in the context of fundraising, secondary transactions and corporate governance.
• Demonstrated ability to work directly with senior executives, investors and cross‑functional stakeholders,

Industry: Finance