Senior Legal Counsel - Americas

Overview

This role supports the Americas region as Senior Legal Counsel, Americas for Electrification Service (ELSE). The position advises business leaders on legal risk and complex matters across commercial contracting, compliance and integrity, disputes, employment, and strategic transactions. Coordination with other legal resources is essential, as existing counsel remain accountable for matters within their assigned businesses, countries, or specialist areas unless responsibility is expressly reassigned.

Responsibilities

• Advise business leaders across the Americas on legal risk, decision-making, and execution of strategic priorities, in coordination with relevant country, business area, and specialist counsel.
• Lead or support drafting, review, and negotiation of complex customer, supplier, service, subcontractor, channel partner, technology, and other commercial agreements across the Americas, as agreed within the regional legal team.
• Design scalable contract management processes, including playbooks, templates, and workflows, to improve efficiency and manage legal risk across high-volume transactions.
• Advise on tenders, contract risk reviews, claims, change orders, project execution, and dispute avoidance in service-intensive markets, including industrial services, utilities, data centers, infrastructure, and renewables.
• Manage litigation, arbitration, pre-litigation claims, settlements, and external counsel, including matter strategy, budgets, reporting, and quality assurance.
• Advise on employment and human resources matters including performance management, investigations, terminations, reorganizations, immigration, and cross-border workforce issues, coordinating with specialists where appropriate.
• Provide strategic legal counsel on mergers and acquisitions, minority investments, divestitures, joint ventures, and restructuring activities globally, including deal structuring, due diligence, and post-closing integration support.
• Support other divisions, business areas, and corporate functions as business needs require, with priorities and matter ownership coordinated through the relevant Legal & Integrity leadership and existing coverage teams.
• Collaborate with lawyers across divisions, countries, specialist teams, and regions under agreed coverage models, matter-allocation principles, and escalation paths.

Qualifications

Required

• Juris Doctor (JD) with active bar admission in at least one relevant jurisdiction.
• Minimum 10 years of in-house or law firm experience supporting industrial, engineering, technology, construction, or services businesses across multiple legal disciplines and jurisdictions in a multinational company.
• Ability to succeed in a highly collaborative environment while operating with appropriate autonomy; partner effectively with divisional, business area, regional, country, and specialist counsel; manage competing priorities; clarify ownership and scope; and advise senior stakeholders under time pressure.
• Strong commercial judgment and substantial experience in commercial contracts, disputes, strategic transactions, and cross-border matters, with ability to identify material risks, develop practical options, support timely business decisions, and engage specialists when needed.

Preferred

• Experience with artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, or Harvey; if not experienced, demonstrated willingness to learn and quickly build AI fluency.

• Strong knowledge of anti-bribery and anti-corruption requirements across the Americas, including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and experience supporting internal investigations.

• Knowledge of professional, contractor, electrical licensing, and related regulatory requirements in one or more Americas jurisdictions, with ability to coordinate local advice where needed.

• Working knowledge of employment and human resources law in one or more Americas jurisdictions, with ability to identify when local specialist advice is required.

• Candidates must already have work authorization that would permit them to work for ABB in the US.

Compensation & Benefits

• Expected base salary range: $163,500 to $261,600 annually.
• Eligible for a short-term incentive plan/annual bonus.

Benefit Summary for eligible US employees

• Health, Life & Disability

  • Choice between two medical plan options: PPO (Copay Plan) OR High Deductible Health Plan (with Health Savings Account) (High Deductible Plan)
  • Choice between two dental plan options: Core and Core Plus
  • Vision benefit
  • Company paid life insurance (2X base pay)
  • Company paid AD&D (1X base pay)
  • Voluntary life and AD&D – 100% employee paid up to maximums
  • Short Term Disability – up to 26 weeks – Company paid
  • Long Term Disability – 60% of pay – Company paid; ability to “buy-up” to 66 2/3% of pay
  • Supplemental benefits – 100% employee paid (Accident insurance, hospital indemnity, critical illness, pet insurance)
  • Paid Parental Leave
  • Employee Assistance Program
  • Health Advocate support resources for mental/behavioral health, general health navigation and virtual health, and infertility/adoption
  • Employee discount program

• Retirement

  • 401k Savings Plan with Company Contributions
  • Employee Stock Acquisition Plan (ESAP)

• Time off

  • 11 paid holidays
  • Salaried exempt positions provided vacation under a permissive time away policy

Location

Remote (operating time zone will align closest with Eastern Time zone).

Equal Employment Opportunity

Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer for protected Veterans and Individuals with Disabilities. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to protected characteristics, inclusive of traits historically associated with race or ethnicity, and any other characteristic protected by federal and state law.

Reasonable accommodation may be requested if you are unable or limited in your ability to use or access the career site due to disability.