Senior Counsel, Coinbase

UK Legal

Salary not provided
Senior and Expert level
London
Coinbase

The world’s leading exchange for digital currencies

Open for applications

Coinbase

The world’s leading exchange for digital currencies

1001+ employees

FintechB2CB2BCryptocurrencySaaS

Open for applications

Salary not provided
Senior and Expert level
London

1001+ employees

FintechB2CB2BCryptocurrencySaaS

Company mission

Their mission is to create an open financial system for the world and to be the leading global brand for helping people convert digital currency into and out of their local currency.

Role

Who you are

  • You’ve got positive energy. You’re optimistic about the future and determined to get there
  • You’re never tired of learning. You want to be a pro in bleeding edge tech like DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and Web 3.0
  • You appreciate direct communication. You’re both an active communicator and an eager listener - because let’s face it, you can’t have one without the other. You’re cool with candid feedback and see every setback as an opportunity to grow
  • You can pivot on the fly. Crypto is constantly evolving, so our priorities do, too. What you worked on last month may not be what you work on today, and that excites you. You’re not looking for a boring job
  • You have a “can do” attitude. Our teams create high-quality work on quick timelines. Owning a problem doesn’t scare you, but rather empowers you to take 100% responsibility for achieving our mission
  • You want to be part of a winning team. We’re stronger together, and you’re a person who embraces being pushed out of your comfort zone
  • Qualified solicitor in England and Wales with approximately 5 -10 years experience working in a regulated e-money / payment services or financial services institution in the UK (e.g. e-money issuer, payment service firm, broker dealer / asset manager) or in a law firm supporting such clients (ideally with some previous in-house experience)
  • Strong familiarity with financial services regulation
  • Experience dealing with regulators such the Financial Conduct Authority, Prudential Regulation Authority and/or other key European regulators is preferred
  • Ability to manage complex projects involving coordination across multiple time zones, challenging legal issues and tight deadlines
  • Ability to work closely with Compliance to deliver coordinated input to the business and other stakeholders
  • Ability to exercise initiative and drive effective internal decision making across complex workstreams to enable Coinbase to meet its long-term goals
  • Ability to manage a large and varied workload and exercise excellent judgment, analytical rigour and commercial pragmatism. Must be able to provide crisp and practical legal advice to business executives across a broad range of matters with limited supervision
  • Highly driven and proactive. Must be keen to create process and structure and strive for continuous improvement
  • Must be flexible, able to multitask, detail-oriented, and enjoy fast paced and high-intensity work
  • Exceptional legal writing abilities and skilled at synthesizing the perspectives of various stakeholders
  • Comfortable working independently in a fast-paced, growth-stage environment, subject to regulatory scrutiny, operating excellence and Coinbase’s demanding standards to operate the world’s most trusted digital currency exchange

Desirable

  • Enthusiasm for and a basic understanding of digital currencies/blockchain

What the job involves

  • Working closely with our London and US-based executive teams, business stakeholders and colleagues in Legal and Compliance globally, you will play a key role in advising our UK operating entity on a broad range of legal matters, including compliance with applicable e-money / payment services and financial services law and regulation, consumer protection law, product roll-outs and strategic initiatives
  • You will also establish and manage legal policies and procedures and assist with the smooth running of legal operations to ensure that our business receives the highest quality legal advice as we continue to expand globally
  • Work closely as legal advisor to business executives and the Compliance team to ensure compliance of EU and international operations with applicable e-money / payment services and financial services law and regulation and digital currency exchange best practices
  • Provide legal guidance to international operating entities. Includes responsibility for ensuring legal and regulatory compliance of new products and services, inter-company operating arrangements, commercial relationships and banking partnerships, retail and institutional terms of business, assisting the business in rolling out products and services to new jurisdictions, and co-ordinating support and advice with the U.S. based legal team as appropriate
  • Advise business leads and other key clients of new regulatory and policy trends and developments involving digital currency in Europe and other key international jurisdictions, and help enable Coinbase’s advocacy for effective regulation
  • Continuously assess operating risks and legal needs and ensure that the legal department is equipped to provide outstanding support as Coinbase’s international business continues to grow
  • Manage outside counsel effectively where they are engaged in connection with specific projects, while establishing your own strong domain expertise

Salary benchmarks

Our take

Coinbase allows its users to create their own crypto wallets and start buying or selling cryptocurrencies by connecting with their bank accounts. It also provides a series of merchant payment processing systems and tools that support transactions with many popular websites.

Coinbase has recently made a big push to broaden its services away from consumers and they want to cater services from institutional investors.

Coinbase currently offers one of the largest selection of cryptocurrency assets - over 10,000 but does not allow trading on all of them. The company wisely keeps such offerings to the most stable assets however, the list is always expanding. Coinbase see a much wider adoption of cryptocurrency and tokens in the future, and plan to expand potentially to millions in the future. It speaks volumes to Coinbase's goals of wider global adoption that former UK Finance Minister George Osborne is now an Advisor at the company.

Coinbase's lofty ambitions paid off in it being the first crypto listing on the NASDAQ. The company has weathered several bull and bear runs in the cryptocurrency industry through diversification of its offerings, including wallet-as-a-service technology for crypto platforms, and has acquired healthy coffers of cryptocurrency assets. The aim is to eventually operate independently of the volatility surrounding cryptocurrencies.

Freddie headshot

Freddie

Company Specialist

Insights

Led by a woman
Top investors

Some candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

-24% employee growth in 12 months

Company

Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)

Oct 2018

$300m

GROWTH EQUITY VC

Oct 2018

$108.1m

SERIES D

Total funding: $633.4m

Company benefits

  • 12 weeks maternity/paternity leave
  • Vision and dental care
  • Commuter benefits
  • Learning and development budget
  • Unlimited paid time off policy
  • Work from home opportunities
  • Health insurance

Company values

  • Clear Communication - Share information efficiently, improving collaboration and productivity. Practice active listening while. Being candid and kind
  • Positive Energy - Be optimistic about the future and determined to get there. Co-create solutions and work together to get there
  • Continuous Learning - We view every situation as an opportunity to learn, We value giving and receiving regular feedback
  • Efficient Execution - We complete high quality work quickly by working smarter, not harder. We prefer automation over manual work
  • Act like an owner: We take 100% responsibility for achieving the mission. We seek to improve all aspects of our company even in ways that are not explicitly part of our job. We run through brick walls.
  • Customer focus: We are deeply focused on solving our customers’ problems with technology, by enabling them to acquire, store and use crypto. We strive to be the easiest to use, most trusted and most secure platform. In every decision we make, we ask, “How does this create more value for our customers?”
  • Repeatable innovation: We are builders, leveraging technology to improve the world, constantly shipping ideas vs just discussing them. We know that companies must continually reinvent themselves to avoid stagnation. We have a high tolerance for failure, investing 10% of our resources in venture bets that are uncomfortably ambitious

Company HQ

Civic Center, New York, NY

Articles

Leadership

Previously founded UniversityTutor.com, also worked as a Software Engineer at AirBnb

Previously held various head positions, including VP at GE Healthcare, Director at Merrill Lynch and CFO at CIT Bank and Oz Management


People progressing

Joined as a Compliance Analyst, promoted to Compliance Partnerships Senior Associate in 15 months. 2 promotions later, she is now a Financial Crimes & Compliance Manager.

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