Legal & Regulatory Associate

Reporting Line: Head of Legal & Regulatory
Seniority Level: Analyst-level (individual contributor, working directly with function head and founders)
Location: Central London
Experience Required: 1–4 years, ideally from a Magic Circle or US law firm, as a paralegal, or in an in-house compliance seat. Less experience considered for exceptional candidates. Backgrounds in M&A, commercial contracts, financial regulatory, or payments preferred, but open to other disciplines

Summary:
The company is building the global payment network for money moving into, across, and out of the world’s emerging markets, with stablecoin rails under the hood. This role sits at the engine room of the company’s legal and regulatory function as it scales across new payment corridors, working directly with the Head of Legal & Regulatory. The role is split roughly evenly between commercial work — drafting, negotiating, and closing contracts that let the company move money through new corridors — and regulatory work — licensing strategy, KYB operations, sanctions and blockchain screening, transaction monitoring, and the controls that keep the company compliant across Canadian, US, EU, and African jurisdictions. The role is designed around AI-assisted legal and compliance execution: the expectation is to build systems and judgment rather than execute manually at scale.

Responsibilities:

• Licensing (applications and maintenance, multi-jurisdiction): stand up and maintain authorisations including MSB and RPAA registration in Canada, CASP and payment-institution (PSD2) authorisation in the EU, and FinCEN registration plus selective state money-transmitter licensing in the US; own applications, regulator correspondence, and ongoing maintenance/reporting obligations

• Market launch: turn new corridors from idea into live transaction by securing licensing and regulatory clearance with authorities and banking partners, and papering commercial relationships (MSAs, partner and payment-infrastructure agreements)

• Compliance systems and controls: design policies and build the operational machinery for KYB onboarding, sanctions and PEP screening, transaction monitoring, and blockchain/on-chain screening for crypto flows; implement and tune the supporting tooling

Requirements:

• 1–4 years’ relevant experience (Magic Circle/US law firm, paralegal, or in-house compliance seat); exceptional candidates with less experience considered

• Ability to build templates, scripts, or workflows for repetitive legal/compliance tasks rather than repeating manual work

• Speed and judgment: able to turn around a clean MSA in hours, and know which risks need hard negotiation versus which can be accepted with a carve-out

• Strong analytical skills: able to read regulations and commercial terms and immediately see operational implications

• Commercial awareness: understands legal and compliance exist to enable the business, not block it

• Clear written communication: contracts, memos, regulator responses, and partner assessments that don’t require heavy editing

Nice-to-Haves:

• Background in M&A, commercial contracts, financial regulatory, or payments

• Experience across multiple jurisdictions (Canadian MSB/RPAA, US FinCEN/state MTLs, European CASP/PSD2, African regulatory regimes)

• Comfort working directly with regulators, banks, and counsel rather than briefing others

• Interest in using AI tools for legal/compliance workflow automation