Assistant General Counsel - Labor & Employment

Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, Ninja Trader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.

This is a fully remote role, for a US-licensed attorney, preferably based on the West Coast, to join Payward’s world class in-house legal department, reporting to the Global Head of Labor & Employment.

• Serve as a senior member of the Labor and Employment (L&E) legal team, sharing the day-to-day workload with the Global Head of L&E and the broader team

• Work with executive leadership, existing employment counsel, Payward Experience (PX), and other teams to develop L&E practices for rapidly growing global/worldwide workforce

• Advise the company on worker classification issues, employee separations, executive compensation agreements, compensation plans, and wage-and-hour matters

• Advise the company on risk mitigation for trade secret matters, and restrictive covenants

• Support employment and labor due diligence for M&A transactions and advise on post-closing workforce integration, including harmonizing employment terms, policies, and compensation and benefits programs across acquired employee populations

• Provide expert strategic input to the business and recruiting teams on expanding Payward’s global footprint, including EOR and direct employment decisions, transitions between EOR, direct employment, and contractor models for new markets and acquired work forces, global mobility, contingent workforce, and the related worker classification risks

• Work closely with the PX team and business leaders to craft on-point policies and procedures, and to develop and deliver related manager and employee training, for a successful global/worldwide workplace

• Advise on data privacy issues affecting employees and candidates

• Support the PX team with global workplace investigations and employee relations matters involving whistle blower allegations, discrimination, and personnel performance issues

• Manage outside counsel on pre-litigation, arbitration, and local-law matters, and coordinate with litigation counsel on employment disputes

• Help build and refine AI-enabled workflows for the L&E team, such as contract review, policy drafting, and diligence, and set practical guardrails for their use

• Monitor and advise on global L&E trends including those within the cryptocurrency industry to help Company’s competitive adaptability, talent acquisition and retention, and workplace processes

• Additional duties and responsibilities as assigned

• 10+ years of legal experience advising in the US and other jurisdictions on Employment, Labor, and Executive Compensation issues, to include in-house and law-firm experience working with companies in both high-growth scaling and mature, large-enterprise environments

• Broad international Labor and Employment background - law and drafting

• Flexibility to work hours that overlap with PX team members and Asia-Pacific colleagues

• Experience with due diligence and related ramifications when making acquisitions, including post-closing workforce integration

• Experience with compensation plans and with data privacy issues affecting employees and candidates

• Active license to practice law in at least one US State, or eligibility to practice as registered…