Senior Counsel Regulatory & Licensing

Job Description

A leading global digital asset and financial technology platform is seeking a Senior Counsel – Regulatory & Licensing to join its expanding legal team. This is a high-impact opportunity for a commercially minded regulatory lawyer to shape licensing strategy, support international growth, and advise on innovative products across crypto, payments, and traditional finance. Key Responsibilities • Lead end-to-end licensing strategies across digital assets, payments, financial services, and traditional finance, managing multiple licensing applications, renewals, and regulatory engagements across jurisdictions. • Partner with senior management and business teams to translate regulatory requirements into practical market-entry, product, and business development strategies. • Advise on the legal and regulatory structuring of new products, including RWA tokenisation, CFDs, derivatives, traditional financial instruments, and payment solutions. • Support product launches by overseeing regulatory analysis and drafting or reviewing user disclosures, risk warnings, terms and conditions, product agreements, offering documents, and related customer-facing materials. • Establish and maintain jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction frameworks covering product availability, customer eligibility, onboarding restrictions, and permitted marketing and promotional activities. • Provide guidance to marketing, growth, sales, product, and operations teams on compliant customer acquisition and product promotion. • Lead responses to regulatory enquiries, inspections, examinations, investigations, and enforcement matters, working with internal stakeholders and external counsel to protect the business and maintain operational continuity. • Support the operationalisation of newly obtained licences, including local entity establishment, regulatory infrastructure, governance arrangements, and in-jurisdiction hiring required to satisfy substance and supervisory expectations. • Advise the Compliance function on AML/CFT frameworks, regulatory reporting, licence conditions, regulatory change management, and ongoing compliance obligations. • Support strategic transactions and corporate development initiatives by evaluating potential M&A targets from a regulatory and licensing perspective, including the value, transferability, sustainability, and risk profile of acquired licences. • Manage external legal advisers and coordinate cross-functional workstreams across Legal, Compliance, Risk, Product, Operations, Finance, and Business Development. • Develop scalable legal and regulatory processes that support rapid international expansion while maintaining robust governance and risk controls. Candidate Profile • Qualified lawyer with approximately 8–15 years’ post-qualification experience gained at a leading law firm, financial institution, fintech, payments business, digital asset company, exchange, or other highly regulated financial services organisation. • Strong experience in financial regulatory, crypto, digital asset, payments, securities, derivatives, licensing, or related legal matters. • Proven track record managing licensing applications, regulatory projects, examinations, investigations, or market-entry initiatives across multiple jurisdictions. • Experience advising on product structuring and regulatory perimeter analysis for crypto, tokenisation, derivatives, CFDs, payment products, or traditional financial instruments. • Solid understanding of AML/CFT, customer eligibility, financial promotions, regulatory reporting, governance, and ongoing licence obligations. • Experience working with regulators, external counsel, compliance teams, and senior commercial stakeholders. • Commercially pragmatic, with the ability to identify legal and regulatory solutions that support business objectives without compromising defensibility. • Excellent drafting, negotiation, project-management, and stakeholder-management skills. • Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, international, and evolving environment with a high degree of ownership and autonomy. • Strong written and spoken English. Additional language capability and experience working across APAC, EMEA, or other international markets would be advantageous. Why Consider This Opportunity? This role offers the opportunity to work at the intersection of digital assets, payments, financial services, and emerging product innovation. The successful candidate will have meaningful influence over global licensing strategy, product development, regulatory engagement, and the company’s long-term international expansion. Show More