Counsel - Financial Services

Ready to do the most impactful work of your career? At Coinbase, we are uncompromising on our mission to increase economic freedom. The bar is high, the environment is intense, and we like it that way. This isn't a place for complacency; it’s a place to be pushed past your perceived limits. If you're ready to build the future of finance alongside people who refuse to settle for 'good enough,' you belong here. Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called “surges.”

As Counsel, Commercial on the Institutional Legal team, you'll provide hands-on legal support for Coinbase's institutional products across UK and international markets, covering prime brokerage, exchange, trading, custody, derivatives, and financing. The team is a small, highly experienced group of lawyers from traditional finance and fintech backgrounds, working with banks, brokers, hedge funds, market makers, and other professional trading clients. You'll own the commercial legal work that enables Coinbase to build and scale first-of-a-kind institutional products at the intersection of crypto and traditional global markets.

What you'll do:

• Negotiate highly tailored agreements with strategic partners and sophisticated counterparties in the finance, payments, and digital asset space, including prime brokerage, lending, and derivatives documentation.
• Own full product life-cycle negotiation for institutional products, advising on legal issues, risks, complex agreement structures, and company policies in a compliance-oriented environment.
• Lead cross-functional efforts across Institutional Sales, Business Development, Product/Engineering, Finance/Tax, and Compliance to drive alignment and close deals.
• Build scalable commercial processes and risk frameworks that give the business flexibility to execute on an aggressive global growth plan.

Required Skills and Experience:

• Qualified solicitor or barrister (England & Wales) or licensed attorney with 5+ years of experience at a financial services institution (e.g., bank, e-money issuer, broker-dealer, asset manager) or at a law firm advising such clients.
• Proven track record negotiating and drafting institutional financial agreements, including prime brokerage, securities financing, and/or derivatives documentation (e.g., ISDA, GMSLA, futures agreements).
• Experience providing full life-cycle negotiating for trading, custody, or financing products, including advising on legal risk and commercial structuring.
• Familiarity with UK and/or EU regulatory regimes applicable to financial instruments, with the ability to navigate cross-border legal and regulatory considerations.
• Experience leading legal workstreams across globally distributed, cross-functional teams involving Sales, Product, Engineering, and Compliance stakeholders.
• Utilises generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.