GoCardless are here to support you and we’re committed to making the hiring process inclusive and accessible for everyone. If you need extra support or any adjustments made, please reach out to your Talent Partner.
Remember, we don’t expect you to meet every requirement. If you’re excited by this role, we encourage you to apply.
About us
At GoCardless we believe bank payments are the best way to pay and get paid. We also believe that bank account data is a powerful tool to make better, faster decisions. We’re making it easy to use both- for businesses everywhere.
GoCardless is used for domestic and international payments by 85,000+ organisations and counting, processing more than $30 billion across 30 countries. We are headquartered in the UK, with additional offices in Australia, France, Latvia and the United States.
We’re approaching ‘Legal Risk’ in Financial Services in a new way.
- We are ready to serve everyone, if we wanted to - we ensure Legal Risk does not constrain the business but empowers it to achieve its goals;
- We create the best possible customer experience - we want our customers (both internal and external) to look forward to going through our processes; and
- We aim to automate wherever possible - we don’t like inefficiencies nor do we believe that real risk mitigation is achieved by throwing people at the problem.
The Legal Function is at the forefront of GoCardless’ expansion. We must ensure that GoCardless adopts, implements and maintains forward-thinking and appropriate processes and controls, often coming across new challenges or issues that require innovative solutions.
The role
- As Associate Legal Counsel (4 to 6 years of PQE), you will focus on a number of legal areas and advise UK teams across the business.
- You will take a consultative approach and work closely with the business- never working alone, or able to concentrate on purely legal issues. As a member of a busy legal team you will also be expected to contribute to team-wide initiatives.
- The key responsibilities of this role include:
- Support and advise the team in charge of the relationships with PSPs and negotiate PSP deals
- Support and advise the Partner team and negotiate strategic Partner deals
- Support and advise the Go-To-Market teams in the UK on the most strategic and/or highest value deals
- Work closely with your manager to support on strategic projects
- Work on specific projects, for example when we roll out new templates/launch new products
- Reviewing and negotiating customer, partnership and supplier contracts by providing pragmatic and commercial support
- Supervise more junior lawyers on negotiations or on specific files
- Instruct and manage external legal counsel
- Build out and maintain self-help tools, playbooks and guides for the legal team and for the wider business
- Focus on constant process improvement related to high volume work - for example by iterating our contracting automation and management workflows
- Be prepared to deal with any legal issue, at any time.
Desired skills
We’re looking for a lawyer with private practice training and/or in-house experience in a fast-paced environment. You will be driven, able to work independently and able to apply your existing knowledge and approach across a very wide range of legal (and quasi-legal) areas. As a technology business, it helps if you have had experience in a similar area, or perhaps you have a keen interest in tech outside of your day to day work.
We’d love to hear from you if:
- You grasp new legal concepts quickly, and are not afraid to use your common sense.
- You are able to appropriately challenge ways of working and not be afraid to ask why.
- You are a self-starter who is proactive and you are willing to roll up your sleeves to get the job done.
- Your communication skills are first class, and you are able to distil complex and cumbersome legalese into understandable English.
- You love tech and tools, and love exploring how they can contribute to efficiency and customer experience.
- You enjoy project management and thrive on operational efficiency.
- You are easy to work with, do not take yourself seriously and want to work in a fun, fast-growing and challenging environment.
Bonus points if:
- You have knowledge of FCA requirements or payment services.
- You have experience with selling and supporting SaaS solutions.
- You can explain what an API is.
- Wellbeing - stay healthy with dedicated support and medical cover
- Work away scheme - you can apply to work away from your country of residence for up to 90 days in any 12 month period (in accordance with our work away policy)
- Adaptive Working - Our hybrid workplace model fosters collaboration and flexibility, with in-office days determined at team level
- Equity - all permanently employed GeeCees receive equity so we can share in the success we achieve together
- Parental leave - to suit everyone embarking on life's great adventure
- Time off - generous holiday allowance, + 3 annual volunteer days, + 4 annual business-wide wellness days (‘GC Fridays’)
Life at GoCardless
We're an organisation defined by our values; We start with why before we begin any project, to ensure it’s aligned with our mission. We make it happen, working with urgency and taking personal accountability for getting things done. We act with integrity, always. We care deeply about what we do and we know it's essential that we be humble whilst we do it. Our Values form part of the GoCardless DNA, and are used to not only help us nurture and develop our culture, but to deliver impactful work that will help us to achieve our vision.
Diversity & Inclusion
We’re building the bank payment network of the future and our ambition is to move money anywhere, for anything, for anyone. If we’re going to achieve this goal, we need to build a team of ‘GeeCees’ that is as wonderfully diverse as the world we live in - with a multitude of perspectives, experiences & backgrounds.
We’ve got a long way to go, but here’s how we’re doing as of July 2024;
45% identify as women
23% identify as Black, Asian, Mixed or Other
10% identify as LGBTQIA+
9% identify as neurodiverse
2% identify as disabled
If you want to learn more, you can read about our Employee Resource Groups and objectives here as well as our latest D&I Report
Sustainability
We’re committed to reducing our impact on the environment, leaving a more sustainable world for future generations. In 2021 we became co-founders of the Tech Zero coalition, a group of businesses committed to taking climate action as part of the UNFCCC Race to Zero. We aim to reduce our impact and to create positive change on the natural world. Check out our sustainability action plan here.
Find out more about Life at GoCardless via Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
What We Do
GoCardless is on a mission to take the pain out of getting paid for businesses with recurring revenue.
We’ve created a global bank debit network, to rival credit and debit cards. On top of it, we’ve built a platform designed and optimised for taking invoice, subscription, membership and instalment payments.
We now process $13bn in transactions a year and we’re proud to count 50,000 businesses around the world as our customers, from small businesses to household names like TripAdvisor and the Guardian.
Our recurring payments platform integrates with the applications businesses use every day, giving businesses more visibility over payments and saving them huge amounts of time on tasks like payment reconciliation. We partner with more than 150 billing and subscription software partners globally, including Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, Zuora and Salesforce.
GoCardless has offices in London, Paris, Munich, Melbourne and San Francisco. We’re backed by some of the world’s leading investors including Adams Street Partners, Accel Partners, Balderton Capital, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Notion Capital, Passion Capital, Salesforce Ventures Y Combinator.
