Senior Legal Counsel, Financial Partnerships & Regulatory
- Experience
- Senior
- Employment
- Full-time
Open to Anywhere in APAC. Set where you work from to check your eligibility.
No BS summary
Senior Legal Counsel with 10+ years of experience specializing in financial partnerships and payments regulation. Must have a background combining top-tier law firm and fintech in-house experience. Based in APAC or with significant time zone overlap. Needs to operate autonomously managing contracts, due diligence, and regulatory analysis for stablecoin cross-border payments.
Core skills
Required skills
Optional skills
Required languages
Job Title: Senior Legal Counsel, Financial Partnerships & Regulatory Department: Legal Reports to: Head of Legal Location: APAC
About Codex
Codex is building the infrastructure for stablecoin-based cross-border payments — moving money faster, cheaper, and more transparently than the legacy financial system. Backed by Circle, Coinbase, Dragonfly, Wintermute, and Cumberland, we're a small team solving hard problems at the intersection of crypto and global payments.
The Role Codex's product offering and financial partnership network is expanding rapidly — new payment providers, banking partners, and liquidity providers globally. The legal work that underpins those relationships needs to move at the same pace as the business. This role exists to make that happen.
You'll own the legal workstream for financial partnerships end-to-end — reviewing and negotiating FP contracts, managing due diligence requests, and advising on the regulatory implications of new products, corridors, and partner structures. You'll work closely with the Head of Legal and report into the legal function, with tight day-to-day collaboration with the Financial Partnerships, Product and Compliance teams.
This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who has done this work before and can operate with a high degree of autonomy.
Responsibilities
Financial Partnership Contracts
- Review, negotiate, and execute commercial agreements with financial partners — payment providers, banking counterparties, liquidity providers, and PSPs
- Own the contract lifecycle end-to-end: preparing markups, tracking open issues, coordinating with counterparties, and driving to execution without losing momentum
- Maintain and update standard form FP agreements as the regulatory and commercial environment evolves
- Advise the Financial Partnerships and Sales teams on commercial terms, entity routing, and deal structuring across multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction arrangements
Financial Partner RFIs & Due Diligence
- Manage inbound legal and regulatory due diligence requests from financial partners — collating documentation, preparing regulatory status summaries, and coordinating with Compliance on AML/CFT-related queries
- Prepare and maintain legal memos, licensing summaries, and corporate documentation packages for partners requiring clarity on Codex's regulatory status and entity structure
- Ensure Codex's outbound KYB documentation to financial partners is accurate, current, and responsive
Product Regulatory Analysis
- Analyse the regulatory implications of new products, payment corridors, and client segments before they go live — identifying licensing requirements, restrictions, and structural considerations across relevant jurisdictions
- Advise Product and Engineering on the legal constraints that affect feature design, entity routing, and market entry sequencing
- Monitor regulatory developments across key jurisdictions (APAC, LATAM, EMEA) and brief the legal and business teams on material changes
What We're Looking For
- Qualified lawyer with 10+ years of experience, ideally combining a first-tier law firm foundation with in-house experience at a fintech payments company
- Deep expertise in financial partnership contracts and payments regulation — this is a domain specialist role, not a generalist one
- Comfortable operating autonomously: you can pick up a complex contract, identify the issues, and drive it to execution without needing significant direction
- Commercially aware — you understand that legal is an enabler of the business, not a gate, and you give advice accordingly
- Meticulous and detail-oriented, with the communication skills to translate complex legal positions into clear guidance for non-lawyers
- Based in APAC or a time zone that overlaps meaningfully with the team
Nice to Have
- Experience across multiple APAC and other regions and familiarity with the regulatory frameworks governing cross-border payments and digital assets in the region
- Exposure to stablecoin or digital asset regulation
- Prior experience as a solo or early legal hire at a fast-growing fintech
What you'll do
- Review, negotiate, and execute commercial agreements with financial partners (payment providers, banking counterparties, liquidity providers, PSPs)
- Own the contract lifecycle end-to-end: preparing markups, tracking open issues, coordinating with counterparties, driving to execution
- Maintain and update standard form FP agreements as the regulatory and commercial environment evolves
- Advise Financial Partnerships and Sales teams on commercial terms, entity routing, and deal structuring across multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction arrangements
- Manage inbound legal and regulatory due diligence requests from financial partners
- Prepare and maintain legal memos, licensing summaries, and corporate documentation packages
- Ensure Codex's outbound KYB documentation to financial partners is accurate, current, and responsive
- Analyse the regulatory implications of new products, payment corridors, and client segments before they go live
- Advise Product and Engineering on legal constraints affecting feature design, entity routing, and market entry sequencing
- Monitor regulatory developments across key jurisdictions (APAC, LATAM, EMEA) and brief teams on material changes
What they require
- 10+ years of experience
- First-tier law firm foundation with in-house experience at a fintech payments company
- Deep expertise in financial partnership contracts and payments regulation
- Comfortable operating autonomously
- Commercially aware
- Meticulous and detail-oriented
- Strong communication skills to translate complex legal positions for non-lawyers
- Based in APAC or a time zone that overlaps meaningfully with the team
Benefits
- Backed by Circle, Coinbase, Dragonfly, Wintermute, and Cumberland
- Small team solving hard problems at the intersection of crypto and global payments
center that combines Stanford's legal and computer science schools to work on big issues at the intersection of law and technology