Assistant General Counsel – Product and Regulatory Legal (EU)

Overview

This role is a senior, product-facing legal position for the European Union within the Product and Regulatory Legal team, embedded with Product, Design, and Engineering to support the launch and regulatory operation of licensed entities.

The work spans multiple regulatory regimes at once. A single product—such as tokenised equity, a card, or an institutional custody and prime brokerage service—may involve MiFID II, MiCA, PSD2, EMD2, and banking rules. You will help determine which regime applies, what it requires, and how to launch within scope.

Reporting to the Head of Product Legal, you will advise European leadership on new products, licensing structure, and regulatory strategy.

Responsibilities

• Provide cross-functional product counselling for European Union launches from discovery through design, launch, and iteration, delivering decision-ready advice to Product, Engineering, Compliance, and leadership with clear options and risk trade-offs.
• Advise on the regulatory perimeter and classification of new offerings across MiFID II and MiFIR, MiCA, EMIR, payment services and electronic money rules, and banking regulation, including how offerings fit between regimes (e.g., tokenised securities, crypto-asset derivatives, margin and financing, and stablecoin-linked products).
• Advise on payments and electronic money offerings, including card and account propositions, safeguarding, open banking, and account-access obligations, and the developing Payment Services Directive 3 and Payment Services Regulation framework.
• Advise on banking-related questions in the European Union, including bank partnerships and sponsor-bank arrangements, deposit-taking and lending perimeter questions, the Capital Requirements Regulation and Directive, and how these interact with custody, prime brokerage, and financing products.
• Monitor and interpret European Union legislative and supervisory developments; participate in consultations and industry association work where appropriate; translate implications for the business proactively.
• Draft and negotiate client-facing terms and conditions, taking clear business-aligned positions.
• Act as a gatekeeper for European Union outside counsel engagements: scope work, estimate and manage cost, and sign off before matters go externally.
• Mentor and develop more junior lawyers; set quality standards for plain-English, risk-based advice; serve as a senior sounding board across the Regulatory Legal team.
• Use AI-assisted tools (for example Enterprise GPTs) to accelerate regulatory analysis, first drafts, and matter tracking, and to help build self-service tools enabling stakeholders to answer commoditised legal and regulatory questions.
• Advise on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing requirements affecting products, including the Transfer of Funds Regulation ("Travel Rule") and the new European Union anti-money laundering package, and on market abuse, conduct, outsourcing, and operational resilience obligations, including DORA.
• Lead or oversee licensing, authorisation, and variation workstreams in the European Union, including scoping requirements, mapping pathways, supervising outside counsel, preparing application materials, and managing regulator interactions.

Requirements

• Qualified lawyer admitted in Ireland, England and Wales, or another European Union Member State.
• 15 or more years' post-qualification experience ("PQE") in financial services regulatory law, gained at a regulated financial services institution (for example a bank, payment institution, broker-dealer, exchange, central counterparty, or crypto services provider) or at a leading law firm supporting such clients; ideally with in-house or direct product counselling experience.
• Deep, current knowledge of several of the following, with real depth in at least two:
  • MiFID II and MiFIR (investment services, market structure, derivatives, and conduct)
  • MiCA (crypto-asset services, custody, trading platforms, and stablecoins)
  • European Union payment services and electronic money regulation
  • European Union banking regulation
• Demonstrated ability to analyse novel products against overlapping regimes and provide clear classification and perimeter guidance, including where rules are unsettled or supervisors have not yet spoken.
• Direct experience managing senior regulator relationships, including notifications, information requests, supervisory correspondence, and examinations.
• Working knowledge of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing, outsourcing, and operational resilience obligations, including DORA.
• Proven ability to instruct, supervise, and manage outside counsel cost across multiple jurisdictions.
• Outstanding analytical, drafting, and organisational skills, including crisp plain-English writing.
• Ability to distill complex legal and regulatory issues into clear, actionable guidance for non-lawyer stakeholders and senior leadership.
• A pragmatic, commercially accountable approach to legal and regulatory risk, including providing stakeholders a useful range of options and a clear recommendation.
• Experience mentoring or managing lawyers, including sound judgment on when to escalate.
• Comfort working with a high degree of autonomy in a fast-moving, remote environment.
• Familiarity with using AI tools such as Enterprise GPTs to improve the efficiency of legal services.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience advising on tokenised securities and the European Union Distributed Ledger Technology Pilot Regime.
• Experience with EMIR, including the clearing obligation, margin for non-centrally cleared derivatives, and transaction reporting.
• 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 that intersect with European Union operations.
• Experience supporting regulatory aspects of corporate transactions, such as change-of-control notifications and entity migrations.
• Experience with European Union data protection and consumer protection rules as they apply to financial products.
• Fluency in a second European language.
• An authentic interest in crypto and digital assets, and familiarity with crypto-related products.

Compensation & Benefits

• Compensation and benefits details were not specified in the job description.

Location

• European Union (senior product-facing legal role for the European Union).