Employment Law Counsel EMEA

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Corporate Overview

Proofpoint is a leading cybersecurity company protecting organizations’ greatest assets and biggest risks: vulnerabilities in people. With an integrated suite of cloud-based solutions, Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyber attacks.

Leading organizations of all sizes, including more than half of the Fortune 1000, rely on Proofpoint for people-centric security and compliance solutions mitigating their most critical risks across email, the cloud, social media, and the web.

We are singularly devoted to helping our customers protect their greatest assets and biggest security risk: their people. That’s why we’re a leader in next-generation cybersecurity.

The Role

The Employment Law Counsel/EMEA will join the global Employment Law/HR Compliance legal team, reporting directly to the Senior Director, Employment Law and HR Compliance (who is US based). You will have appetite for innovation as part of a small team in a fast-growing, multi-cultural environment, as well as willingness to learn and expand knowledge in the areas of privacy, corporate compliance and trade secret protection.

The successful candidate will be comfortable leading and interacting with internal and external business people, and making agile decisions that comply with company standards, policy and strategy as well as evolve Proofpoint practices. The ideal candidate will have between 7-10 years of legal experience in the field of employment law, including time in private law practice as well as in-house for a corporation.

Your Day to Day

• Partnering with the HR organisation in EMEA, providing guidance and counsel on employment law and compliance related queries

• Provide legal analyses of applicable laws, regulations and agency guidance that impact employees and HR compliance, and assist in the design and implementation of appropriate policies, processes and practices

• Collaborate with the broader legal team in enhancing its capabilities and services efficacy through technology and other legal operations tools and best practices

• Assist in development and implementation of various legal templates, forms, communications, and operational systems to improve the delivery and scalability of legal resources to a worldwide, distributed client base by working collaboratively with other legal team members and the sales organization

• Proactively communicate issues back to leadership and drive good business, legal and operational processes and practices throughout the organisation; drafting and implementing related policies, and seeking ways automate key legal processes

• Monitor legislation, regulations, case law, and government enforcement activities relating to the above substantive legal areas, and provide proactive, strategic advice to the Sr. Director, Employment Law and HR Compliance and relevant stakeholders

• Support audits, process reviews, and new policy creation and implementation related to employment law, HR and corporate compliance.

• Support management of outside counsel retained to handle administrative charges or lawsuits filed against the Company

• Facilitate process improvements, create efficiencies, and provide trainings as necessary

• Travel throughout EMEA as needed

• Partner with Sr. Director, Employment Law and HR Compliance to prepare and deliver live and virtual trainings in EMEA on key topics of employment law and compliance

• Flexibility and willing to work extended hours when necessary to connect with colleagues across time zones, especially with the United States/Pacific Time Zone.

What you bring to the team:

• Fully Qualified lawyer in Ireland, UK, other EU country (preference for dual qualification in Ireland and UK)

• Experience in practice, and also ideally in-house experience in the High-Tech industry

• Ideally you will have experience of partnering with HR in a fast-paced environment that requires client- interaction, sound judgment, excellent counselling skills and ability to prioritise

• Experience handling both employment counselling as well as litigation and other dispute resolution forums

• Experience dealing with unions, works councils and other employee representative bodies (especially France, Germany)

• Excellent negotiation skills and diplomacy, including ability to build consensus, “soft” skills to encourage, motivate and influence at all levels of the organization and those of our customers and partners

• Enjoy working with internal clients, demonstrating accountability, adaptability and resilience

• Strong drafting skills with keen attention to detail and the ability to improve our forms and work using customer or partner paper

• Effective communication and presence in person, in groups, over video and teleconference, email and in more formal documentation

• Highest degree of personal and professional integrity and ethics

• Fluent English is essential; plus fluency in other EU languages would be an advantage

Why Proofpoint

Protecting people is at the heart of our award-winning cybersecurity solutions, and the people who work here are the key to our success.  We’re a customer-focused and a driven-to-win organization with leading-edge products. We are an inclusive, diverse, multinational company that believes in culture fit, but more importantly ‘culture-add’, and we strongly encourage people from all walks of life to apply.

We believe in hiring the best and the brightest to help cultivate our culture of collaboration and appreciation. Apply today and explore your future at Proofpoint! #LifeAtProofpoint

If you like wild growth and working with happy, enthusiastic over-achievers, you'll enjoy your career with us!