General Counsel

Accountabilities

• Lead the global Legal and Compliance function across EMEA and the Americas, establishing its structure, priorities, standards, service expectations, and operating model.
• Build and manage a strong distributed leadership capability by hiring and developing managers, setting clear objectives, maintaining high performance standards, and addressing underperformance directly.
• Establish an effective operating cadence for legal work, including intake and prioritization, internal service expectations, workload management, risk reporting, and executive visibility.
• Own legal readiness for a future public-market environment, including corporate governance, group and entity structures, delegated authorities, policies, disclosure controls, records, and related processes in partnership with Finance.
• Advise senior executives and the Board on significant legal, regulatory, commercial, governance, and risk matters, including participation in Board and committee meetings.
• Own the commercial contracting framework, including standard agreements, negotiation positions, escalation processes, and controls that ensure material commitments are understood before execution.
• Lead intellectual property and open-source licensing strategy, covering areas such as copyleft and permissive licensing, trademarks, software distribution, and the legal considerations surrounding open-source communities.
• Own the global compliance program across data protection and privacy, export controls and trade compliance, anti-bribery and corruption, competition law, and emerging AI regulation.
• Manage litigation, disputes, and regulatory engagements while overseeing the external counsel network, including its quality, scope, and budget.
• Provide legal guidance on M&A, partnerships, strategic alliances, financing activities, and other major corporate initiatives as the organization expands.
• Partner closely with product, engineering, security, finance, and other functions to translate complex legal considerations into commercially practical and actionable decisions.

Requirements:

• Exceptional academic performance at both secondary-school and university levels, demonstrating strong intellectual ability and analytical discipline.
• A law degree or equivalent qualification together with an active license to practice in an EMEA or Americas jurisdiction.
• Substantial senior in-house legal experience within a global technology or software business, with strong exposure to complex international operations.
• Proven experience leading distributed legal teams, including managing managers across multiple regions and time zones.
• Demonstrated ability to establish and maintain high performance standards through effective hiring, coaching, development, accountability, and performance management.
• Experience building, scaling, or restructuring an in-house legal function, including determining which matters should be handled internally, delegated, or managed through external counsel.
• Strong experience negotiating and managing commercial technology agreements, including enterprise software and subscription contracts, channel and reseller agreements, hardware manufacturer arrangements, cloud services, and related technology agreements.
• Deep understanding of open-source licensing, including permissive and copyleft licenses, together with practical familiarity with open-source communities and operating models.
• Experience with, or strong demonstrable readiness for, public-company governance, including listing preparation, Board and committee support, disclosure requirements, and internal controls.
• Significant expertise in at least two areas among data protection and privacy, intellectual property and trademarks, export controls and trade compliance, competition law, or disputes.
• Excellent judgment and the confidence to challenge constructively, exchange feedback, hold colleagues accountable, and communicate difficult positions when necessary.
• Outstanding written and verbal English skills, with strong legal drafting, presentation, and executive communication capabilities.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility, commercial awareness, and a strong sense of personal accountability.
• Willingness and ability to travel internationally approximately two to four times per year for company events lasting up to two weeks.
• Experience taking a business through an IPO or working as counsel within a publicly listed company is a strong advantage.
• A technical or engineering background, or strong fluency in how software is developed, delivered, and operated, is beneficial.
• Experience with subscription or recurring-revenue business models and qualifications in multiple jurisdictions would be advantageous.

Benefits:

• Remote working opportunity within EMEA time zones.
• Significant executive-level ownership over the global Legal and Compliance function.
• Opportunity to shape legal, governance, compliance, and contracting infrastructure in preparation for future public-market requirements.
• Distributed working environment with twice-yearly in-person team sprints.
• Annual personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000.
• Bi-annual compensation reviews.
• Performance-driven annual bonus or commission opportunities.
• Company recognition and reward programs.
• 40 days of annual leave per year, including public holidays and company-wide holiday periods.
• Maternity and paternity leave.
• Team Member Assistance Program and wellness platform.
• Opportunities to travel internationally and meet colleagues at company events, with Priority Pass lounge access.
• Global environment with opportunities to work alongside colleagues and stakeholders across multiple regions.