Assistant General Counsel – Product and Regulatory Legal (EU)

The role

You will act as a senior legal adviser to European leadership on new products, licensing structure, and regulatory strategy. You will provide cross-functional product counselling for European Union launches and advise on various regulatory regimes.

What you will do

• Own cross-functional product counselling for European Union launches
• Advise on the regulatory perimeter and classification of new offerings
• Advise on payments and electronic money offerings
• Advise on banking-related questions in the European Union
• Monitor and interpret European Union legislative and supervisory developments
• Draft and negotiate client-facing terms and conditions
• Act as gatekeeper for European Union outside counsel engagements
• Mentor and develop more junior lawyers in the team
• Use AI-assisted tools to speed up regulatory analysis and drafting
• Lead or oversee licensing, authorisation and variation workstreams in the European Union

Required qualifications

• Qualified lawyer admitted in Ireland, England and Wales, or another European Union Member State
• 15 or more years' post-qualification experience in financial services regulatory law
• Experience gained at a regulated financial services institution or at a leading law firm supporting such clients
• Deep, current knowledge of at least two of: MiFID II and MiFIR, MiCA, European Union payment services and electronic money regulation, or European Union banking regulation
• Ability to analyse novel products against overlapping regimes
• Direct experience managing senior regulator relationships
• Working knowledge of anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, outsourcing and operational resilience obligations, including DORA
• Ability to instruct, supervise and manage the cost of outside counsel
• Outstanding analytical, drafting and organisational skills
• Ability to distill complex legal and regulatory issues into clear guidance
• Pragmatic, commercially accountable approach to legal and regulatory risk
• Experience mentoring or managing lawyers

Nice to have

• Experience advising on tokenised securities and the European Union Distributed Ledger Technology Pilot Regime
• Experience with EMIR
• Experience with prime brokerage, securities financing, margin lending or institutional custody
• Experience advising on the United Kingdom cryptoasset regime or other non-European Union frameworks
• Experience supporting regulatory aspects of corporate transactions
• Experience with European Union data protection and consumer protection rules
• Fluency in a second European language
• An authentic interest in crypto and digital assets

Before you apply

• We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments

About the company

Payward is the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks. Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions.