Senior Legal Counsel, Digital Assets and Payments in Cardiff

We’re on a mission to make money work for everyone. We’re waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking. After starting as a prepaid card, our product offering has grown a lot in the last 10 years in the UK. As well as personal and business bank accounts, we offer joint accounts, accounts for 16-17 year olds, a free kids account and credit cards in the UK, with more exciting things to come beyond. Our UK customers can also save, invest and combine their pensions with us. With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers! We’re not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo.

We’re looking for a Senior Legal Counsel to join our team at Monzo to support our payments business including digital assets and emerging payment technologies. You will report to Monzo’s Director of Legal for Payments & Business Banking, be part of the Legal and Board Governance Collective, and act as a legal business partner for the teams working on these initiatives. This role sits at the intersection of payments, digital assets and emerging payments technologies. You’ll help teams navigate a rapidly evolving legal and regulatory landscape, helping Monzo innovate responsibly while protecting our customers.

You’ll work directly with senior lawyers, product managers and engineers to provide legal advice and commercial insights to develop and grow Monzo Bank in the UK - and internationally. In particular, you will:

• Partner with product managers to advise on legal matters, in particular relating to the impact of digital assets and emerging financial technologies, and advise on the legal and regulatory requirements for Monzo.
• Help to develop efficient ways of working to enable Monzo to scale quickly, ensuring Monzo operates safely and in accordance with the law and regulation.
• Provide training and knowledge sharing with other Monzonauts on the impact of laws and regulations for Monzo and our customers in your specialist area.
• Often act as the sole lawyer advising product managers or other colleagues, identifying legal issues proactively, evaluating relevant risks and finding effective solutions to unique and complex business activities.
• Work closely and collaboratively with Monzo’s Director of Legal for Payments & Business Banking, Director of Product Legal, the General Counsel of Monzo Bank Limited and the other members of the UK Legal team to provide legal advice and commercial insights, in particular in relation to digital assets and other emerging financial technologies, to Product teams.
• Be a trusted advisor and work proactively and collaboratively with other relevant stakeholders and teams across the Monzo Group, including the Product, Risk & Compliance, Supplier Operations, Financial Crime, Fraud and Operations teams.
• Advise on the evolving legal and regulatory framework for digital assets and emerging financial technologies, working with colleagues across the UK and EU to help identify relevant local legal and regulatory requirements and apply them to our products.
• Work with colleagues across the Legal and Board Governance Collective to improve the management of our teams’ activities, including through identifying suitable technology solutions to streamline workflows, optimise processes and efficiencies, and increase scalability.
• Proactively manage relationships with external suppliers and law firms to enhance processes around cost management to ensure we are optimising our spend and extracting best value while delivering top-quality legal support.

We’d love to hear from you if…

• You are a technically excellent lawyer with a minimum of 5 years of relevant post-qualification experience, with recent experience of digital assets, emerging financial technologies and the evolving regulatory regime.
• You have demonstrated experience of advising on laws and regulations relevant to financial services, including the UK regulatory regime as it applies to digital assets and emerging payment technologies.
• You are a team player and a keen problem solver, skilled at assessing risk and recommending solutions that balance commercial and risk considerations.
• You think ahead, anticipate relevant challenges, understand the commercial objectives of the teams you support, set clear objectives, and find effective solutions.
• You are proactive, take initiative to broaden your knowledge, and are passionate about the intersection of banking and technology and the transformation unfolding in consumer finance.
• You are excited to work in a fast-paced environment and to join us for the next stage of our journey at Monzo!

The interview process involves 3 main stages: Recruiter call, Initial call, Full loop: Technical and behavioural interviews. Our average process takes around 3-4 weeks but we will always work around your availability.

What’s in it for you:

• circa 110,000 + Incentive Awards tied to your performance benefits.
• Learning budget of 1,000 a year for books, training courses and conferences.

Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we’re making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we’re embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone.

We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status.