[Remote] Deputy General Counsel - Global Head of Derivatives and Trading Legal

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Payward, the parent company behind Kraken, builds globally accessible financial infrastructure for an open financial system. The Deputy General Counsel will own global derivatives structuring strategy and serve as the senior legal owner for derivatives and trading products across multiple jurisdictions. The role will lead regulatory engagement, support licensed entities, and build a senior derivatives and trading legal function.

Responsibilities

• Own global derivatives structuring strategy — product structure, venue and entity architecture, clearing models, and how a single coherent derivatives offering is delivered to clients across several separately licensed entities
• Together with Payward’s Regulatory Legal team, solve the cross-entity problems that sit in no single product — hub-and-spoke architecture, unified balances, cross-margining, and where risk and client relationships actually sit across the group. These are the hardest questions we answer
• Be the named senior legal owner for the derivatives and trading product lines, wired into the product launch process from the start rather than consulted at the end, and the single senior route into Legal for derivatives and trading
• Lead and build the team — hire, level and develop senior derivatives counsel across jurisdictions, and build depth and succession into a function that is currently thin at the top
• Partner with Global Policy and Government Relations as the senior legal counterpart for derivatives regulatory engagement with the CFTC, NFA, FCA, BMA, CySEC and others, pre-socialising positions with regulators and internal leadership before they land, not after
• Support the supervised estates that carry derivatives permissions, working with Regulatory Legal on continuous supervisory relationships and on new permissions and variations tied to product launches
• Bring structuring judgement in-house, and direct external counsel where genuinely specialist input is required
• Additional duties and responsibilities as assigned

Skills

• Attorney admitted to practice in the US, or qualified lawyer (Solicitor/Barrister of England & Wales, Irish Solicitor/Barrister, or equivalent admitted in an EU Member State)
• 18+ years' post-qualification experience (PQE) in financial services regulatory law gained at a regulated financial services institution, major liquidity provider or in a law firm/private practice supporting such clients, with demonstrated ability to independently own BAU regulatory workstreams
• Experience supporting regulator engagement (e.g., with the CFTC, NFA, FCA, Cysec, or an equivalent EU competent authority), including notifications, information requests, and supervisory correspondence
• Substantial senior in-house or equivalent experience in derivatives legal, with demonstrated ownership of structuring strategy rather than transactional execution alone
• Deep, expert-level command of at least one of the following derivatives regulatory regimes — US (CFTC, NFA; FCM, DCM and DCO structures), UK (FCA), EEA, or an offshore regime (e.g., Bermuda) — together with a high degree of fluency in at least one other. No single regime is treated as the required one; what matters is genuine mastery of one and strong working command of a second
• Direct experience with virtual asset markets
• Experience structuring a product offering across multiple licensed entities in different jurisdictions, and holding a view on where activity, risk and the client relationship should sit
• A track record of building or materially scaling a legal function or team, including hiring, levelling and succession
• The range to operate at function level, setting strategy for the function as a whole, organising it to stay ahead of the regulatory perimeter, and holding senior lawyers to account for results and behaviour, not only for output
• Credibility with regulators and the judgement to take positions in front of them
• Comfort operating as the senior legal voice in a fast-moving, product-led business where the regulatory perimeter changes underneath you, and comfort staying close to the work rather than managing at a distance
• Exposure to prediction markets, margin lending, or tokenized and structured products
• Experience integrating acquired regulated entities, and their legal teams, into a group legal function

Benefits

• Remote work

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