Legal & Compliance - 1st hire, build with AI

Overview

This role is the organization’s first and sole legal and compliance hire. There is no internal legal team; you will own legal and compliance end-to-end for current products and new products launched in the future, taking each new product from zero to one.

You will build the legal and compliance foundation for a shift from a one-product company to a multi-product company.

Responsibilities

• Stand up new products with the smallest footprint that works
• Partner with product and engineering to design each new product so it delivers the customer outcome with the fewest licenses and obligations, reusing what the organization already has
• Define entity, licensing, and bank-partner posture for each product once design is settled
• Draft and maintain policies, procedures, disclosures, and agreements each product actually needs; obtain approvals from partners and regulators
• Review marketing, product flows, and partnerships before launch, and build a review process that scales without requiring constant direct involvement
• Reconcile and unify the compliance posture across the product suite as it grows, removing duplication rather than stacking requirements
• Keep current legal and compliance operations running at the standard partners expect
• Identify what can be codified, automated, or retired to reduce manual work over time
• Run litigation defense, dispute resolution, complaints, exams, and audits with limited cross-functional support
• Own bank and partner compliance relationships, privacy, and BSA/AML/KYC and fraud policy
• Run the function on agents, including:
  • Building and maintaining agentic workflows for research, drafting, policy maintenance, monitoring, and reconciliation
  • Maintaining a quality bar on all outputs produced through these workflows (critical thinking and judgment remain with you)
• Measure effectiveness by how much of the operating side runs without you
• Engage outside counsel only when something undeniably requires it and cannot be handled agentically; scope work tightly and own the relationship
• Communicate clear, fast, written answers that stakeholders can act on (founders, engineering, product, marketing, and customer experience)
• Represent the organization with banks, partners, regulators, and auditors

Requirements

• JD and active bar admission in a US state
• Prior legal or compliance experience inside a fintech startup (ideally fast-growing)
• Experience running legal and compliance through a regulated consumer product lifecycle (mid-career)
• Comfort operating in a high-intensity, high-ownership environment with full accountability, including the ability to move quickly and meet tight timelines
• Strong judgment and the ability to distinguish between work that can be agentially drafted versus what requires your sign-off
• Strong writing and communication skills (clear, concise answers that readers can understand on the first read)
• Exceptionally organized with close attention to detail
• Technically proficient:
  • Comfortable reading code and data
  • Able to pull your own numbers and build workflows using AI tools
• Hands-on familiarity with the consumer finance compliance stack, including:
  • FCRA and credit reporting
  • UDAAP
  • TILA/Reg Z
  • ECOA
  • EFTA/Reg E
  • State lending and money-transmission licensing
  • Bank partnership programs
  • BSA/AML/KYC
• Experience managing outside counsel and handling direct relationships with regulators or bank partners

Preferred Qualifications

• A multidisciplinary background (business, engineering, or product) prior to or alongside legal work
• Demonstrated ability to shape a product or program to need less over time (e.g., design choices that avoided a license, consolidated programs, or automated processes)

Compensation & Benefits

Not specified.

Location

• Fully remote
• Austin, TX reporting location for the founder you will report to is a plus, not a requirement.