Lead Legal Counsel, IP in London

At Bumble, our mission is to create a world where healthy and equitable relationships and friendships thrive, and our Legal team plays an important role in protecting the ideas, brands, technology, and experiences that bring that mission to life. As Lead Legal Counsel within our IP team, you’ll be a senior subject-matter expert helping Bumble navigate complex intellectual property questions across our brands, products, technology, content, and creative work.

You’ll independently lead significant IP matters and shape practical strategies in close partnership with colleagues across Legal, Marketing, Creative, Brand, Design, Product, and Engineering, combining Courage and Curiosity with strong commercial judgement. You’ll also help us explore the opportunities and risks created by AI and other emerging technologies, using AI thoughtfully in your own work while applying human judgement, care, and accountability to the outcomes.

What You’ll Do

• Shape and execute Bumble’s global intellectual property strategy in partnership with Legal leadership, translating business, brand, product, and technology priorities into practical approaches to protection, portfolio management, licensing, and enforcement.
• Take ownership of significant matters across Bumble’s international trademark, copyright, patent, domain name, trade secret, and broader digital asset portfolio, working with external counsel and specialist providers to protect strategically important intellectual property.
• Collaborate with purpose across Marketing, Creative, Brand, Design, Product, and Engineering, providing practical rights-clearance and IP advice from early concept and development through launch, including trademarks, copyright, publicity rights, creator and talent rights, user-generated content, and third-party materials.
• Independently lead complex IP enforcement and dispute matters, including infringement, oppositions, litigation support, and evidence management, applying commercial judgement to determine where action can deliver meaningful protection for Bumble’s brands and innovation.
• Advise on the creation, ownership, protection, licensing, and commercialisation of Bumble-developed intellectual property, and draft and negotiate sophisticated IP arrangements including licences, coexistence agreements, assignments, merchandising arrangements, technology agreements, and strategic partnerships.
• Partner with Product and Engineering on patent strategy, software development, open-source software, and innovation protection, while advising on emerging IP questions involving generative AI, training data, provenance, ownership, licensing, and infringement risk.
• Take ownership of IP priorities from insight to impact by supporting due diligence for significant partnerships, investments, and acquisitions and by developing practical playbooks, precedents, training, and self-service guidance that help teams identify and manage IP risk consistently.
• Champion Bumble’s values of Excellence and Respect by providing clear, pragmatic advice to senior stakeholders and maintaining an agile mindset as legal, technology, and business priorities evolve.
• Use approved AI tools where appropriate to strengthen legal research, review, summarisation, and knowledge management, while carefully assessing outputs for accuracy, privacy, bias, and responsible use.

About You

• You are qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales, or hold an equivalent qualification in another European jurisdiction.
• Typically requires 8+ years of experience, though we welcome candidates with alternative backgrounds that demonstrate equivalent skills.
• You bring deep intellectual property expertise, particularly across trademarks, copyright, brand protection, licensing, portfolio management, rights clearance, and technology-related IP matters, developed in-house, in private practice, or through a combination of both.
• You have strong experience advising consumer technology or similarly complex businesses on intellectual property issues involving software, digital content, product innovation, AI, and emerging technologies, and can independently develop practical solutions to significant or unusual legal questions.
• You are an accomplished drafter and negotiator who can manage sophisticated IP and technology arrangements and translate complex legal concepts into clear recommendations that enable informed commercial decisions.
• You collaborate with purpose and build trusted relationships with senior partners across different disciplines.
• You take ownership of challenging matters, see work through from insight to impact, and adapt your approach with an agile mindset as priorities and information evolve.
• You combine sound commercial judgement with strong organisational and project-management skills, distinguishing material business risks from theoretical ones while effectively managing multiple priorities, international portfolios, external advisers, and specialist providers.
• You demonstrate Curiosity, Courage, and Excellence in how you work, and you are comfortable identifying and using AI opportunities to improve effectiveness and insight while exercising appropriate human judgement and applying AI responsibly, inclusively, and with care for confidentiality and data privacy.

Benefits & Perks

• Annual personal learning & development budget
• Private Medical Insurance (PMI)
• Private Dental Insurance
• Babylon Health app
• Mental health support
• Enhanced parental leave, including a highly competitive maternity package
• Unlimited PTO
• Subsidised gym membership
• ‘Double matched’ pension contributions up to 6%
• Premium App Access

About Us

Bumble Inc. is the parent company of Bumble Date, BFF, and Badoo. The Bumble platform enables people to build healthy and equitable relationships, through Kind Connections. Founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2014, Bumble was one of the first dating apps built with women at the center and connects people across dating (Bumble Date) and friendship (BFF). BFF is a friendship app where people in all stages of life can meet people nearby and create meaningful platonic connections and community based on shared interests. Badoo, which was founded in 2006, is one of the pioneers of web and mobile dating products.

AI Fluency

AI is important to us. We’re excited by people who are curious and experimental, and who think thoughtfully about how AI can amplify their impact and outcomes. We encourage you to use AI responsibly as you prepare your application. Please don’t use it to fabricate experiences or answer questions live in interviews. We care deeply about authenticity and want to understand your real skills, judgment and voice, because building a meaningful, genuine connection with you matters to us.

Final Compensation

Will be determined based on factors such as the selected candidate’s qualifications, relevant experience, skill set, and other job-related considerations.

Inclusion at Bumble Inc.

Bumble Inc. is an equal opportunity employer and we strongly encourage people of all ages, color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and non-binary people, veterans, parents, people with disabilities, and neurodivergent people to apply. We're happy to make any reasonable adjustments that will help you feel more confident throughout the process, please don't hesitate to let us know how we can help.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example: she/her, he/him, they/them, etc).

AI in Bumble Inc. Hiring

At Bumble, we may use AI tools to support parts of our recruitment process — such as helping us record, transcribe, and summarize conversations, and supporting job alignment by comparing resumes and job descriptions to highlight skills and potential roles that may be a good match. These tools help us work more efficiently and stay focused on you during our conversations. Importantly, all hiring decisions are made by people. AI is used only to support our team’s efficiency and improve the candidate experience — not to evaluate or decide on your candidacy. Participation in AI-supported interviews and conversations is completely voluntary and will not impact your candidacy. If you’d prefer to opt out, simply let your recruiter or interviewer know at the start of a call, or anytime during the interview or conversation. Summaries and related data are retained only as long as needed in line with our internal data retention policies. If at any point you’d like a transcription or summary deleted, please contact your recruiter directly.

Fraudulent Candidate Detection

Our applicant tracking system analyzes signals relating to device, IP, email, and phone data associated with each application to protect applicants and our hiring process from fraudulent applications. These signals provide indicators for internal review only and do not constitute a definitive determination of identity or intent. No applicant is rejected, advanced, or otherwise affected solely based on this analysis without human review.

For further information on how we hold and manage your data, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

Location

UK London

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Hybrid

Department

Legal

Legal Counsel