Head of Legal

Join a purpose led organisation where legal plays a central role in enabling growth, innovation and strong customer outcomes. You will lead a high performing legal function and work closely with senior leaders to shape strategy in a fast growing, regulated business where your advice directly influences products, partnerships and customer trust. We are on a mission to make investing feel good for everyone. This is a senior leadership role with real influence across Product, Operations, Risk and Compliance, Technology and Commercial teams as we continue to scale in a complex regulatory environment.

What you will do:

• Set and deliver a scalable legal service model that balances risk, cost and efficiency.
• Shape the future of legal delivery through templates, playbooks and legal technology.
• Advise on product development, customer terms, supplier and strategic partnerships.
• Ensure customer-facing terms and communications are clear, fair and aligned to Consumer Duty outcomes.
• Coach, develop and inspire a capable legal team.
• Foster a collaborative, business-partnering culture with a focus on accountability and continuous improvement.
• Lead litigation strategy, pre-action claims and incident response with a pragmatic, outcome-focused approach.
• Oversee external legal providers and ensure cost-effective, high-quality delivery.

What you will bring:

• Senior legal leadership experience within, or reporting into, a General Counsel or Group Legal Director role in a regulated or consumer-facing business.
• Strong commercial judgement with the ability to translate complex legal issues into practical advice for non-lawyers.
• Expertise across commercial contracts, consumer contracts and data protection.
• Proven risk management capability and sound decision-making on risk versus reward.
• Excellence in negotiating strategic partnerships, technology and outsourcing contracts.
• Experience building and leading high-performing teams.
• A curious, collaborative and outcome-driven mindset.

Nice to have:

• Experience in financial services, platforms, wealth, payments, neo-banking or retail investing.
• Exposure to M&A or capital markets activity.
• Experience optimising legal operating models, including matter intake, SLAs, KPIs and self-service tools.
• Company secretarial experience.

About us:

AJ Bell is one of the fastest-growing investment platform businesses in the UK offering an award-winning range of solutions that caters for everyone, from professional financial advisers to DIY investors with little to no experience. We have over 644,000 customers using our award-winning platform propositions to manage assets totalling more than £103.3 billion. Our customers trust us with their investments, and by continuously striving to make investing easier, we aim to help even more people take control of their financial futures. Having listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange in December 2018, AJ Bell is now a FTSE 250 company. Headquartered in Manchester with offices in central London and Bristol, we now have over 1,500 employees and have been named one of the UK's 'Best 100 Companies to Work For' for six consecutive years and in 2025 named a Great Place to Work.

Our perks and benefits:

• Starting salary of £110k commensurate with experience.
• Starting holiday entitlement of 28 days, increasing up to 31 days with length of service plus a holiday buy and sell scheme.
• A choice of pension schemes with matched contributions up to 8%.
• Discretionary bonus scheme.
• Buy As You Earn (BAYE) Scheme.
• PMI Health Cash Plan provided by SimplyHealth.
• Discounted private healthcare scheme and dental plan.
• Free gym membership.
• Employee Assistance Programme.
• Bike loan scheme.
• Sick pay pledge.
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, and shared parental leave.
• Loans for travel season tickets.
• Death in service scheme.
• Paid time off for volunteer work.
• Charitable giving opportunities through salary sacrifice.
• Calendar of social events, including monthly payday drinks, annual Christmas party, summer party and much more.
• Ongoing technical training.
• Professional qualification support.
• Talent development programmes.
• Peer recognition scheme, with rewards including restaurant and shopping vouchers or time off.
• Monthly leadership breakfasts and lunches.
• Casual dress code.
• Access to a range of benefits from our sponsorship deals.

Hybrid working:

At AJ Bell, our people are the heart of our culture. We believe in building strong connections by working together. That’s why we offer a hybrid working model, where you'll spend a minimum of 50% of your working time per month in the office. For new team members, an initial period will be full-time in the office to help you immerse yourself in our business and build valuable relationships with your colleagues.

AJ Bell is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants and all employees are empowered to bring their whole self to work. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, pregnancy, religion, physical and mental disability, marital status and any other characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010. All decisions to hire are based on qualifications, merit and business need.

If you like the sound of the above, or just want to know more about the company and the role, we'd love to speak to you.