Legal Counsel in Guildford

Working Hours/Arrangements: 40 hours per week (9am to 6pm, including one hour of unpaid break). Fully Remote or Hybrid Working: 3 days in the office and 2 days working from home.

Salary Range: £85,000 - £100,000 per annum.

Location: Guildford office – 2000, Cathedral Square, Cathedral Hill, Guildford GU2 7YL, United Kingdom.

Reporting to: Amanda Alonefti, Head of Legal.

Who we are: Nexcess provides specialty cloud solutions for organisations where performance and compliance coexist. We serve businesses worldwide, from agencies scaling client sites to enterprises running mission-critical operations. We've built our reputation on deep technical expertise and genuine partnership with every client we work with.

About The Role: We are seeking an experienced, agile, and business-minded Legal Counsel to join our legal team and support our growing operations across the globe. In this role, you will serve as a trusted advisor to senior leadership and cross-functional teams, managing legal, commercial, and compliance risks with a particular emphasis on contract negotiation and corporate governance. The ideal candidate is a responsive, detail-oriented legal advisor who can balance legal risk with business objectives in a fast-paced, collaborative environment, with limited day-to-day oversight.

What You’ll Do:

• Commercial Contracts: Draft, review, and negotiate a broad range of complex agreements, including but not limited to terms and conditions, consulting agreements, marketing, lease, intra-group contracts, employment agreements, vendor contracts, and customer agreements to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory standards and own the full contract lifecycle: drafting, negotiation, approvals, execution, and archiving. Maintain and evolve contract templates and playbooks for key commercial and corporate agreements.
• Employment and labour: Advise on employment law matters, including hiring, terminations, and restructurings.
• Risk & Compliance: Identify legal risks across data privacy, security, employment, anti-bribery, and artificial intelligence and provide practical legal advice to business partners on risk mitigation and regulatory compliance.
• Corporate Governance: Support litigation, dispute resolution, corporate due diligence, and mergers and acquisitions in partnership with internal and external counsel. Handle corporate governance matters of the entities in our group worldwide, including coordination of corporate approvals, documentation, and record-keeping and manage statutory, regulatory, and internal compliance matters for the group entities, including timely filings, corporate records, and ongoing alignment with applicable legal and governance requirements, often in collaboration with external corporate service providers, agent and external counsel as applicable.
• Policy & Operations: Create, implement, and maintain internal corporate policies regarding data retention, surveillance, employment, AI and privacy to optimize business outcomes while managing risk. Keep up with developments in applicable laws which may require amendments to existing policies and/or creating new policies to ensure compliance.
• Regulatory Compliance: Create, implement, and maintain internal corporate policies regarding a variety of topics.
• Cross-Functional Advisory: Partner with senior leaders on key initiatives and compliance, advising on legal and regulatory matters and providing practical solutions.
• External Counsel Management: Coordinate and oversee external legal counsel when required.

Required Qualifications:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree or higher in Law (LL.B., LL.M., or equivalent).
• Experience: Minimum 5-7 years of post-qualification legal experience with strong expertise in corporate and commercial law, with proven experience drafting and reviewing contracts and solid knowledge of corporate governance, compliance, and employment law matters. Main experience with US/UK and other EU legal frameworks.
• Core Skills: Proven mastery of corporate law and regulatory compliance. Demonstrated contract negotiation abilities across a variety of agreement types. Strong analytical skills, detailed-minded and ability to work independently. Strong attention to detail, ownership, accountability, flexibility and adaptability. Strong expertise in GDPR and other EU related privacy laws and regulations.
• Mindset: Strong business acumen, critical thinking, and the ability to solve complex problems creatively.
• Adaptability: Collaborative spirit and the agility to thrive in a fast-changing corporate landscape.
• Communication: Excellent written and verbal English communication skills; comfortable operating in a multi-national, cross-border environment.

Nice-to-Have:

• Industry experience in hosting, cloud infrastructure, or technology companies.
• Multi-jurisdictional exposure and hands-on experience supporting companies across multiple jurisdictions worldwide would be an advantage.
• Prior in-house legal experience an advantage.
• Knowledge of DORA obligations and the AI Act and experience in litigation support and dispute resolution.

We offer:

• Private healthcare – Once probation period is passed.
• Embrace parenthood with 18 weeks generous paid leave after completion of 15 months’ ‘Continuous service’.
• Pension contribution – 5% of the salary.
• 28 annual leave days plus all Bank Holidays on a pro-rata basis in each holiday year in England and Wales.
• 10 days working from anywhere in the world following completion of probationary period on a pro-rata basis.
• Office Lunches – Deliveroo to the value of £14 each day.
• Mobile phone bill paid to the value of £80 (subject to BiK taxation).
• Casual dress code.
• Use of Apple MacBook Pro laptop – Mouse and Keyboard. AirPods Headset.

“Servers.com is committed to equality and diversity for all staff and applications from individuals are encouraged regardless of age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and marriage and civil partnerships.”

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