Legal Director

About the role

Legal leadership and compliance

• Build and lead the legal function, including hiring, onboarding and performance management; set objectives, workflows and reporting lines.
• Manage outside counsel, legal budgets and team processes.
• Own regulatory, licensing and compliance requirements across operating jurisdictions; engage regulators, licensing bodies and auditors and manage applications, renewals and reporting.
• Design and maintain AML/KYC, MLRO, sanctions, market-conduct and data-protection frameworks, policies and controls.
• Monitor digital-asset and banking regulation and translate changes into business guidance.

Products, transactions and capital raising

• Advise on financial-product structuring, SPVs, corporate structures, jurisdiction selection and cross-border considerations.
• Draft and negotiate agreements with banking partners, custodians, exchanges and institutional counterparties; manage external legal advisors and engagements.
• Advise on token issuance, distribution and ongoing management.
• Lead legal workstreams for equity, preference-share, convertible, token-sale and other capital raises, including documentation, disclosures and investor terms.
• Coordinate with tax, finance and compliance on fundraising structure and execution.

Onboarding, governance and risk

• Own legal and compliance workflows for onboarding entities and external clients; maintain due-diligence standards for KYC/KYB, AML, sanctions and risk ratings.
• Draft, negotiate and manage onboarding documents and maintain KYC/KYB records.
• Advise the CEO and Board on governance, corporate-secretarial matters and board reporting.
• Identify and mitigate legal and regulatory risks, maintain the legal risk register and legal document management systems, and manage disputes, litigation and regulatory investigations.

Candidate requirements

• Qualified lawyer with a strong academic background and current standing at the bar or relevant law society.
• Significant banking or institutional-finance experience followed by recent web3/digital-assets experience.
• Experience building, managing and developing a legal team, with a strong structuring, operational and process-oriented mindset.
• Deep regulatory, licensing and compliance expertise in financial services and digital assets.
• Hands-on financial-product structuring experience, including SPVs or similar structures.
• Working knowledge of token management, token economics and capital raising through multiple avenues.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication with regulators, boards and senior management; comfortable in an entrepreneurial, multi-jurisdictional environment.

Desirable experience

• Understanding of real-world asset tokenization and other financial products is preferred.
• Blockchain interest or experience, prior General Counsel/Head of Legal/senior in-house counsel title, regulator relationships, cross-border licensing and multi-entity group experience are desirable.