Senior Legal Counsel

What do we do?

Paddle offers digital product companies a completely different approach to their payment infrastructure. Instead of assembling and maintaining a complex stack of payments-related apps and services, we’re a Merchant of Record for our customers. That means we take away 100% of the pain of payment fragmentation. It’s faster, safer, cheaper, and, above all, way better. 

We’re backed by investors including KKR, FTV Capital, Kindred, Notion, and 83North and serve over 5000 software sellers in 245 territories globally. 

The Role:  

As Senior Legal Counsel, you will be a senior member of the Paddle legal and compliance team, reporting directly to Paddle’s Deputy General Counsel. You will lead our small team of lawyers and paralegals, managing them in carrying out the day-to-day work of the legal team and mentoring them to reach their potential. The Paddle legal team is well-respected and integrated into Paddle’s business. As a result, this role will require you to collaborate with other teams across the business, and advise cross-functionally, always with a view to empowering the business to achieve its goals while taking a long-term strategic view.

The role itself will be broad and varied, with a core regulatory element. You will be delivering first-rate legal advice in a fast-paced dynamic environment, identifying risk and balancing common sense with your legal expertise. You will be an excellent generalist, comfortable operating in areas of ambiguity.

As Senior Legal Counsel, you will consider the longer-term impacts whilst also being able to react quickly to deliver level-headed, creative and context-appropriate solutions to ensure the best possible customer experience in the ever changing tech space. 

The role will be based in the UK but will be global in scope.

What you'll do: 

You will support the Deputy General Counsel in their duties and advise and partner with every team from across the business on a wide range of matters, including the following:

• Leadership remit: You will lead, manage and mentor a small team of lawyers and paralegals in a wide range of legal work, including corporate and governance matters, administration of Paddle’s international branches and subsidiaries, negotiating commercial agreements, regulatory research and advising our product and support teams. Your duties may include supervising in-house trainee lawyers seeking their SRA qualification.

• Strategic commercial work: You will lead on the negotiation of  strategic commercial contracts, including key supplier and customer agreements.

• Strategic corporate work: You will assist with the negotiation of strategic corporate contracts, including financing agreements. 

• Regulatory advice (incl data protection): 

  • You will lead on  the identification and analysis  of evolving rules and consumer regulations relevant to Paddle’s global MoR business model.

  • You will collaborate with the compliance function to develop and implement risk and compliance policies and procedures relevant to Paddle’s operations and the MoR business model.

  • You will draft, negotiate, and advise on data protection agreements, terms of service, privacy policies, and other privacy- and data-related contracts and disclosures, collaborating closely with the compliance function.

We'd love to hear from you if: 

• You have a minimum of 6-7 years of legal experience, with at least 3 years in-house at a regulated high-growth tech scale-up preferably in payments, FinTech, SaaS or related sectors.

• You are a UK-qualified solicitor (preferably) or qualified in another common law or European jurisdiction.

• You enjoy leading and working with junior team members, helping them to grow and realise their potential. 

• You are smart, curious, keen to learn and have a proven ability to quickly get across new and complex legal concepts. 

• You are used to working from first principles, applying common sense, and excited about answering questions you have never dealt with before. 

• You are an excellent and persuasive communicator used to partnering with a range of stakeholders across the business and externally.

• You are skilled at tailoring your legal advice to the recipient, whether they be senior management or a junior contributor. 

• You are commercially-minded and able to deliver creative, helpful and practical solutions to a rapidly growing business, often operating under pressure and in an area characterized by ambiguity.

Everyone is welcome at Paddle

At Paddle, we’re committed to removing invisible barriers, both for our customers and within our own teams. We recognise and celebrate that every Paddler is unique and we welcome every individual perspective. As an inclusive employer, we don’t care if, or where, you studied, what you look like or where you’re from. We’re more interested in your craft, curiosity, passion for learning and what you’ll add to our culture. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t match every part of the job ad, especially if you’re part of an underrepresented group.

Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to better support you through the application process and in the workplace. We will do everything we can to support any accommodations needed. We’re committed to building a diverse team where everyone feels safe to be their authentic self. Let’s grow together. 

Why you’ll love working at Paddle

We are a diverse, growing group of Paddlers across the globe who pride ourselves on our transparent, collaborative and respectful culture. 

We live and breathe our values, which are:

Paddle for others

Paddle together

Paddle simply

We offer a full suite of benefits, including attractive salaries, stock options, retirement plans, private healthcare and well-being initiatives. 

We are a ‘digital-first’ company, which means you can work remotely, from one of our stylish  hubs, or even a bit of both! We offer all team members unlimited holidays and enhanced parental leave. We invest in learning and will help you with your personal development via constant exposure to new challenges, an annual learning fund, and regular internal and external training.