Director, Head of Legal Innovation

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Kraken’s Legal Department is deploying AI across all four of its major practice groups — Regulatory, Litigation, Commercial, and Labor & Employment — with a detailed strategy, shared infrastructure, and a phased roadmap already defined.

We are hiring a Director, Head of Legal Innovation to serve as the primary architect and builder of AI-powered solutions within the Legal team. This is a full-stack ownership role spanning opportunity identification, solution design, deployment, governance, and capability transfer. You will work strategically to automate legal workflows while building the team’s data-driven infrastructure across multiple practice groups. This role is ideal for someone who builds production systems, not slide decks — someone who can configure a workflow in the morning, train a team on it in the afternoon, and measure its impact by end of quarter.

Design and deploy AI-powered Legal solutions

• Architect and build agentic workflows using n8n, Claude API, and MCP that take real actions in legal processes — contract review, research, drafting, intake triage, reporting, and deadline monitoring — with appropriate human oversight and approval gates.

• Design and deliver solutions across priority legal use cases: NDA triage, regulatory analysis, board deck preparation, matter reporting, obligation tracking, and separation agreement drafting.

• Architect the integration layer connecting internal systems (Jira, Agiloft, GEMS, SimpleLegal, Google Drive, Slack) into automated, AI-powered workflows that serve multiple practice groups simultaneously.

• Build error handling, audit trails, privilege-awareness, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints into every production system before deployment.

• Assess how legal work currently flows across intake, matter management, contracting, research, advice, and reporting — identify where AI and automation can eliminate manual work and reduce cycle times.

• Ensure all automations comply with data classification requirements for privileged legal work product, PII, and cross-jurisdictional privacy obligations including GDPR and applicable data retention rules.

Own governance and risk for Legal AI systems

• Classify all automation builds by risk tier before work begins. No build goes to production without a named process owner, documented data flows, access controls confirmed, and privilege impact assessed.

• Maintain audit logging and documentation for all systems touching privileged legal work product, attorney communications, or regulated data.

• Halt or redesign builds that introduce unacceptable privilege, regulatory, or data privacy risk. Own that decision and secure organizational acceptance before proceeding.

• Serve as the Legal domain representative in contributing to governance standards, AI risk management, and cross-functional build alignment across Kraken’s enterprise AI initiatives.

Multiply the Legal team’s capability

• Produce documentation, workflow templates, and runbooks that legal team members can use and maintain without ongoing technical support.

• Build and lead an internal AI champions program. Train team members on AI-assisted tools and workflows deployed in production. Drive adoption, not just delivery.

• Track and report on automation impact: workflow turnaround time reduced, matters per attorney increased, reporting prep time shortened, and attorney capacity unlocked for higher-judgment work.

• Define and report quarterly on efficiency metrics with clear baselines and targets — driving adoption from initial rollout through full team integration.

• Act as a force multiplier for the Legal team, enabling attorneys to focus on high-judgment, high-stakes decisions through process, technology, and AI enablement.

• 8+ years of experience in a technical, operations, or engineering-adjacent role with demonstrated senior-level execution of automation and AI solutions at scale.

• Strong fluency with AI and workflow automation tools, with demonstrated experience designing, deploying, and driving adoption of AI solutions within operational or business workflows.

• Demonstrated hands-on experience designing and deploying AI-powered or automated workflows in a production environment used by others, not just experimentation.

• Systems thinker with a strong implementation mindset — able to move from discovery to design to build to deployment to optimization without relying on external consultants.

• Proficiency with AI tooling stack: n8n, Python, Claude API/Anthropic SDK, or equivalent. Experience connecting business systems via API is required.

• Solid understanding of data classification, PII handling, and cross-jurisdictional privacy and data protection obligations including GDPR and applicable data retention requirements.

• Experience implementing governance and risk frameworks for AI or automation systems, including risk tiering, human review gates, audit logging, and data classification.

• Strong analytical problem-solving skills with the ability to structure ambiguous operational questions into clear, actionable, automated workflows.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills. Able to translate technical automation solutions for professionals, senior leadership, and stakeholders who are not technical.

• Experience working with lawyers or within a legal department — understanding how legal teams operate, how legal work product is reviewed, and how attorney-client privilege applies to technology systems.

• Hands-on experience with legal technology platforms such as CLM systems (Agiloft, Ironclad), matter management (Jira, Legal Tracker), spend management (SimpleLegal, BrightFlag), or legal research tools (Westlaw, CoCounsel).

• Background in legal operations, including intake design, vendor management, knowledge management, or reporting.

• Experience using AI for document analysis, contract review, research summarization, or regulatory analysis in a legal, compliance, or financial services context.

• Familiarity with Anthropic’s Claude Enterprise features, MCP (Model Context Protocol), or prompt engineering best practices.

• Experience in crypto, fintech, payments, or a regulated financial institution operating across multiple jurisdictions.

• Background in building or running an AI Champions program, Center of Excellence, or internal enablement function.

• Python programming skills for data analysis, workflow scripting, or integration development.

• Prior experience standing up or operating a legal technology, legal automation, or legal innovation function.

#LI-Remote

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.

Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Kraken is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate all Krakenites for their diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions and unique perspectives. We hire strictly based on merit, meaning we seek out the candidates with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills considered the most suitable for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgable about crypto!

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments are designed to evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Assessment results are considered alongside other relevant information, such as experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.

As an equal opportunity employer, we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind. Whether that’s based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state or local laws. 

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