Senior Legal Counsel - Front End Projects, Commercial and Operations

This is a critical senior legal position, responsible for providing strategic commercial and operational legal support across all activities. It adds value by shaping strong, competitive bids; securing contracts that balance opportunity with disciplined risk allocation; and ensuring the business enters each project with clarity, protection, and commercial advantage.

This position is an individual contributor role within CB&I's dynamic legal group located across the USA, UK, and the UAE. It will serve as a strategic partner to various functions across our global organization (e.g., Operations, Engineering, Commercial, Supply Chain, BD, Compliance, Legal, HR, IT, etc.) and will have significant responsibilities and exposure to leadership.

• Legal support for bids and tenders.
• Business partner with BD and Commercial to structure competitive (compliant) commercial positions.
• Attend project kick-off and monthly contract review meetings.
• Coordinate with Finance, Tax, HSE, Operations, and Engineering to ensure contract terms reflect operational reality.
• Advise on contractual rights, remedies, notices, termination options, and enforcement strategies.
• Support commercial teams with interpretation, analysis, and drafting of qualifications for clients, subcontractors, and suppliers.
• Ensure project teams understand contractual obligations, deliverables, milestones, and risk positions.
• Ensure all agreements reflect mandatory local legal requirements, regulatory constraints, and market-specific terms.
• Advise on governing law, dispute-resolution mechanisms, and enforceability challenges in high-risk or low-predictability legal systems.
• Manage contract approval workflows to ensure compliance with internal policies, delegation of authority, and escalation protocols.
• Maintain and update contracting templates, fallback positions, and negotiation playbooks.
• Partner with Finance, Tax, HR, Commercial and Business Development to ensure contracts reflect end-to-end operational and compliance realities.
• Together with Disputes Counsel, manage early-stage contract disputes, notices, escalation pathways, and settlement strategies.
• Draft and negotiate subcontracts, ensure flow-down of obligations, and manage subcontractor claims.
• Manage bank guarantees, bonds, retention, and security releases in line with contract terms.
• Adapt global templates for local use while maintaining core protections and global standards.
• Select, instruct, and manage external counsel, ensuring efficient case handling, cost control, and alignment with business priorities.
• Support consistent implementation of corporate behaviours and standards.
• Train commercial and operational teams on contracting and litigation risks, red flags, and required controls specific to high-risk jurisdictions.
• Track, interpret, and communicate changes in local laws and regulations, translating them into clear, actionable operational guidance.
• Work with Legal and Compliance to update and align policies, procedures, and controls with evolving regulatory requirements and industry standards.
• Provide oversight and collaboration on legal matters intersecting with compliance, regulatory obligations, and operational risk.
• Help lead and coordinate responses to regulatory exams, audits, and inquiries, including submissions, remediation planning, and cross-functional preparation.
• Report to senior leadership on regulatory developments, emerging risks, trends, and key compliance metrics across high-risk jurisdictions.
• Optimise external legal spend by negotiating best rates, capped fee regimes and monitoring and recording external legal performance and spend in accordance with the department's best practice.
• Progress internal billing approvals with relevant stakeholders.
• Helping with financial and audit requests on law firm appointments and billing information.
• Distinguishes between nice to have vs. essential and critical legal solutions.
• Exercises sound legal and commercial judgement for any of the accountabilities and tasks above.
• Identifies material legal risks and ensures that contract qualifications are optimised accordingly.
• Interprets opaque, rapidly changing, or inconsistently enforced local laws and translates them into practical compliance controls.
• Identify high-risk issues early and escalates to Legal Director / GC with clear options.

Essential Qualifications and Skills:

• Legally qualified with maximum years of experience managing drafting and negotiating complex project agreements.
• Strong command of liability frameworks, indemnities, warranties, LDs, insurance structures, and performance security.
• Experience advising on multi-jurisdictional matters, local law constraints, and country-entry requirements.
• Demonstrated experience working in a senior position in a multinational organization.
• Good communicator with a pragmatic, methodical, detail-oriented, flexible and dynamic approach.
• Realistic negotiator.
• Experience of driving intellectually complex issues to a firm, practical conclusion.
• Highly developed interpersonal skills to build and maintain complex, sensitive and influential relationships across a wide group of stakeholders.
• Ability to see the bigger picture and consider advice in the context of wider organisational goals/policies.
• Ability to self-initialise and perform tasks with minimal supervision and prioritise conflicting demands.
• Confident and capable of interfacing with senior management and partnering with all parts of the business including BD, Commercial, Operations, Project delivery teams, Treasury, Tax, Finance, Co Sec, Compliance, Legal and SCM.
• Risk-based, practical approach to regulatory compliance in high-risk operational environments.