Employment Counsel, Americas

The role

You will act as a hands-on partner to People & Talent on high-risk employment matters. You will provide legal advice, build employment playbooks, and lead workplace investigations across the Americas.

What you will do

• Own US employment law advice and coordinate guidance across other jurisdictions with external counsel
• Build employment playbooks, templates, policies, and manager guidance
• Lead workplace investigations, employment disputes, agency charges, and litigation
• Manage external counsel and associated legal spend
• Partner with People & Talent, Total Rewards, Data & Privacy, Corporate Legal, and business leaders
• Advise on hiring, contracts and variations, performance management, accommodations, leaves, wage and hour compliance, and terminations

Required qualifications

• J.D. degree or foreign equivalent
• Active membership in at least one US state bar
• 5+ years of employment law experience at a leading law firm and/or in-house legal department
• Demonstrated employment counselling experience beyond litigation alone
• Experience advising on and coordinating employment law matters across multiple jurisdictions
• Experience leading workplace investigations and managing employment disputes, agency charges, or tribunal matters
• Experience advising on the employee lifecycle, including hiring, contracts and variations, performance management, accommodations, leaves, wage and hour compliance, and terminations
• Ability to translate complex legal and risk issues into clear, succinct, and actionable guidance for non-legal audiences
• Strong judgment and the ability to give commercially practical advice under time pressure
• Ability to operate independently and pivot quickly within a fast-moving, changing environment
• Fluent English

Nice to have

• California, Washington, or New York bar membership
• Additional languages
• Experience at a fintech, payments company, or other highly regulated business
• Experience with contractor classification, employer-of-record populations, or cross-border remote work and permanent establishment risk
• Experience with California Labor Code matters
• Experience advising on immigration, restructuring, or RIF execution across multiple consultation regimes
• Experience with works councils or statutory employee representation in support of EU entity coverage
• Experience advising on compensation, benefits, and equity matters in a private-company context

About the company

Airwallex is an AI-native financial operating system used by over 675,000 businesses to run financial operations or build financial products. The company started in Melbourne in 2015 and has a financial infrastructure spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.