Senior Associate, Contracts and Compliance in London

About Palladium: Operating in over 50 countries, Palladium is a global consulting and implementation company working in partnership with governments, businesses, investors, and communities to design and deliver solutions that create lasting positive impact. We address some of the world’s most complex challenges across infrastructure, economic growth and natural capital, health, energy, climate and environment, and digital transformation—strengthening systems, institutions, and markets to support inclusive and sustainable development.

This Opportunity: Palladium is seeking a Senior Associate, Contracts and Compliance to provide practical, risk-based contracting and compliance support across UKEA’s project and corporate portfolio. The role acts as a first line of review for contract and commercial issues (in line with the established playbook), identifying risk areas, resolving standard queries, and escalating complex or high-risk issues to Senior Legal Counsel as required. In addition, the position provides compliance and corporate support (including upkeep of country legal profiles and entity information) and contributes to bid and capture activities as required. UK government contracting experience is required.

Location: The position will be based in Palladium’s London office. Please note that applicants must have the right to work in the UK, as visa sponsorship is not available for this role. Palladium follows a hybrid working model, with three days in the office and two days remote.

Reporting Lines: The Senior Associate will report to Senior Legal Counsel.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Commercial Contracting Support: projects with first line review of legal issues relating to subcontracts and contract amendments, resolving standard matters in line with the legal playbook and escalating non-standard, high-risk or novel issues to Senior Legal Counsel.
• Maintain, develop and add to the existing suite of UKEA contracting templates. Adapt existing templates as needed in order to service business needs.
• Advise the business on routine commercial and contracting queries, applying established templates and guidance, and referring matters outside delegated authority as appropriate.
• Support first line review and triage of due diligence queries (including partner due diligence), identifying risk areas and escalating to Senior Legal Counsel as appropriate.
• Contribute to the preparation and maintenance of project specific components of the Project Management Manual, as applicable to Contracts and Compliance.

Compliance and Corporate Support:

• Advise projects on compliance in line with Palladium’s SOPs and Guidelines and client’s rules and regulations, escalating interpretation of complex or ambiguous requirements to Senior Legal Counsel.
• Promptly hand over and escalate all tax issues or insurance-related obligations required by donors and other clients to the relevant internal lead.
• Support workplace and employee relations (ER) investigations as required, including information gathering, documentation review and coordination with HR and Legal, with all findings and decision-making remaining under appropriate HR and Legal oversight.
• Ensure legal aspects of Country Profiles are kept up to date.
• For new registrations, support in assessing country registration requirements, determine the most appropriate form of registration, and coordinate with other corporate services and local teams to accomplish registration.
• Ensure that information relating to all UKEA maintained overseas entities is kept up to date in the Palladium entity register.

Business Capture and Business Development:

• Participate in capture planning, providing inputs on Contracts and Compliance requirements, including but not limited to any requirements for local legal advice or company registration.
• Support to partnering including review of teaming agreements, and any queries arising through partner due diligence.

Knowledge Management:

• Escalate to Senior Legal Counsel any policy issues and training gaps as identified.
• Ensure the completeness and accuracy of SharePoint repository of all Contracts and Compliance templates and tools.

Essential Criteria:

• Degree in Law or paralegal background or similar experience providing strong knowledge of contract law is essential.
• Substantial experience in a wide variety of forms of commercial contracting (and preferably in both public and private sectors).
• Experience of leading negotiations on commercial transactions.
• Government contracting experience is required.
• Experience working with teams on large and complex projects with a high risk profile; comfortable with change and a strong multi-tasker.
• Good experience in dealing with a wide variety of forms of contracting including joint ventures, profit share agreements and grant agreements.
• Working knowledge of international business, corporate structures, and governance.
• Demonstrated experience with commercial contracting and applying public and private sector compliance requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to assess business risk in commercial transactions and advise client/employer accordingly.
• Demonstrated understanding of liability, intellectual property and data protection.
• Contract negotiation skills; sound research skills and ability in interpretation of regulatory and legal requirements.

Core Skills:

• Strong focus on systems, impact, and results.
• Excellent English written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work with a low level of supervision and as a part of a team when required.
• Experience with corporate support services including corporate insurance and litigation.
• Ability to interact with all levels of the organisation.
• Sound problem solving and decision-making skills; Ability to prioritise and multi-task.
• MS Office productivity tools (eg - Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Knowledge of SharePoint is a plus.
• Experience of AI tools to support role effectiveness.

Desirable Criteria:

• Experience in commercial transaction, financial institution, or consulting environments desirable.

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. We encourage you to apply early as the position may close once a suitable candidate is found.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion - Palladium is committed to embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion into everything we do. We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success and good practice.

Safeguarding - We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse.