Legal Counsel (UK)

Overview

In this high-impact role you support Wise Platform for banks, fintechs and enterprise partners, enabling secure, scalable international payments. You partner with Commercial, Product, Pricing and Compliance to provide practical legal advice that accelerates deals and grows the platform. You’ll establish guardrails, templates and playbooks to scale the legal function in a fast-paced environment. You help manage risk while driving change and mentoring others, contributing to Wise’s mission to simplify money movement for everyone, everywhere.

Pay / Benefits

• Stock options
• Flexible working
• Wellbeing support (Employee Assistance Program)
• 6 weeks paid sabbatical after 4 years
• Annual leave
• Wise benefits

Responsibilities

• Own the contract lifecycle for bank partners, online platforms and enterprise customers.
• Build and embed processes, guardrails, and engagement criteria for Legal.
• Prioritize legal resource allocation with a defined framework.
• Manage templates and playbooks including annual reviews and updates.
• Drive communication, change management and stakeholder alignment.
• Draft, review and negotiate agreements across regulatory, payments, banking and partnerships.
• Collaborate with Product, Product Compliance and Pricing to reflect approved positions in agreements.
• Identify and implement tooling to streamline workflows and scale the function.
• Assess operational risk and advise on practical impact for the business.
• Mentor and upskill other Legal team members and wider business.

Key requirements

• Qualified lawyer in England and Wales (or another common law jurisdiction) with 4–6 years PQE
• Strong commercial, B2B experience, ideally in payments, financial services, technology or platform/partnerships
• Experience leading change management and embedding processes, templates, and playbooks
• Proven drafting, structuring and negotiation capabilities
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, multi-deal environment and meet tight deadlines
• Strong stakeholder influence and relationships with senior leadership
• In-house or top-tier firm background
• Energetic, collaborative, and capable of navigating ambiguity in an international business

• relationship-building
• proactive
• solution-oriented
• commercial drafting
• negotiation
• contract lifecycle management

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