Senior Legal Counsel in London

We are seeking an exceptional Senior Legal Counsel to join Cambridge Aerospace at a pivotal moment in the company's growth. Reporting to the Head of Legal, you will serve as the operational engine of the legal function, taking primary ownership of day-to-day legal delivery across the business units with a particular focus on commercial contracting. You will also line manage a paralegal, enabling them to develop under structured legal mentorship, prior to managing and leading other junior lawyers and compliance professionals as the team grows.

Responsibilities

• Lead and own all commercial supplier contracting across the business, including negotiation, drafting, review and execution.
• Act as the primary legal point of contact for all business unit leads on day-to-day legal matters.
• Manage and mentor junior lawyers, providing structured guidance, reviewing their work and supporting their professional development.
• Develop and maintain standard-form contract templates, playbooks and internal legal processes to improve speed and consistency of legal delivery.
• Support the Head of Legal on all legal matters as directed.
• Manage the legal function's workflow and triage incoming legal requests across the business units.
• Play a key role in growing the legal function, including contributing to hiring decisions, shaping the function's structure and capabilities, and helping to build the processes and culture that will support Cambridge Aerospace's next phase of growth.

Requirements

• A proven commercial contracting lawyer with at least 4 years' post-qualification experience and a demonstrable track record of leading complex negotiations end-to-end, across both supplier and customer-side engagements, in fast-moving and high-stakes environments.
• Deep commercial contracting expertise. This is the core of the role. You must be an exceptional drafter and negotiator, comfortable owning complex agreements from first draft through to execution, across a wide range of contract types including supply, procurement, technology, services and government contracts. Experience on both supplier and customer sides is strongly preferred.
• Defence sector experience is essential. You must understand the commercial, regulatory and security landscape in which Cambridge Aerospace operates, including classified environments, defence procurement frameworks and government customer contracting.
• Technology sector experience, particularly with high-tech and data-led businesses. You must be comfortable operating in a fast-moving, engineering-driven environment where legal must enable rather than obstruct.
• International experience across multiple jurisdictions, including cross-border legal complexity in the context of international defence supply chains and foreign government relationships.
• Demonstrated managerial or leadership experience. You must have led a team, managed a junior colleague or paralegal, or taken clear ownership of a legal function in a previous role.
• Outstanding interpersonal skills. You will be the face of the legal function to the business units and must build trust quickly and communicate with clarity and commercial empathy.
• Willingness to work from the office every day. Cambridge Aerospace is growing at extraordinary speed and the energy, collaboration and pace of that growth is felt most acutely in person working shoulder-to-shoulder with world-class engineers and senior strategic stakeholders on a daily basis.

Preferred

• Dispute resolution experience: to support management of supplier disputes and claims without immediate external counsel escalation.
• Health and safety legal knowledge: to support the company's obligations as a manufacturing and technology business.
• Real estate experience: to support site acquisition, lease negotiations and estate management as the business expands its physical footprint.
• IP experience: to support protection of Cambridge Aerospace's core technology assets.
• Export control: UK and overseas strategic export controls, (including ITAR and EAR), framed around Cambridge Aerospace's obligations as a defence technology exporter.
• Reputation management: covering defamation, injunctions, media law and crisis communications support, framed around protecting Cambridge Aerospace's profile in sensitive and politically exposed markets.
• Compliance: covering anti-bribery and corruption (Bribery Act 2010), sanctions compliance and broader regulatory risk, framed around the company's international defence operations.
• Insurance and risk management: covering commercial insurance programmes, product liability and contractual risk allocation, framed around the company's scaling manufacturing operations.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation and stock options.
• Private Medical & Dental.
• Cycle to work scheme.

About Us

The mission of Cambridge Aerospace is to eliminate the risk of existential war in Europe. That risk comes from the air – low-cost drones and cruise missiles now manufactured in colossal volumes by our adversaries, ballistic missiles capable of ending the world as we know it, and a new generation of hypersonic weapons that evade every existing defence.

We’re building low-cost interceptors that defeat these threats, and the surveillance systems to detect and target them – at a cost taxpayers can afford, at the pace the threat demands, and with sovereign supply chains that assure delivery.

We have immense backing from the world’s best venture funds. We’re one of the fastest growing defence technology companies in history. And we’re hiring the best engineers to prosecute the mission.

If you are in the top 1%, willing to work harder than you ever have, build technology better than anyone else, and contribute to the defining challenge of our time, now is the time to join us.

Our Commitment to Inclusion

We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply.