Head of Commercial Legal, Strategy and Enablement

This is Adyen

Adyen provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft - making us the financial technology platform of choice. At Adyen, everything we do is engineered for ambition. 

For our teams, we create an environment with opportunities for our people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. We are motivated individuals who tackle unique technical challenges at scale and solve them as a team. Together, we deliver innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster.

Adyen is seeking a Head of Legal Strategy and Enablement to build and lead a high-performing function that drives operational excellence, strategic alignment, and technological advancement across the Legal organization. This leader will report directly to the Head of Legal and will be critical in transforming the legal function into a key enabler of global business growth.

This is a role for a commercially-oriented leader and team builder who thrives in a fast-moving environment, is energized by complexity, and can translate strategic goals into pragmatic, scalable operational solutions.

Reporting to the VP of Legal, you will manage and mentor two teams: Legal Strategy and Legal Enablement. You will be entrusted with strategically partnering with Legal leadership and cross-functional leaders to define the function’s roadmap, ensure successful execution, and maximize functional value.

You’ll play a key role in ensuring the Legal organization operates with agility and effectiveness, using data to drive thoughtful decision-making, reduce risk, and achieve strategic goals. This dynamic role is ideal for someone who enjoys wearing multiple hats and thrives in developing a deep bench of curious, creative legal and operational professionals.

• Build and lead the Legal Strategy and Enablement function responsible for driving operational excellence and strategic alignment across the function.
• Develop a cohesive legal strategy and operational model that increases functional value, agility, and effectiveness.
• Act as a senior advisor to Legal providing clear, actionable guidance on strategic planning and operational issues.
• Represent Legal in cross-functional initiatives, ensuring legal needs are embedded in strategy and implementation plans.

• Lead talent strategy for the Legal Strategy and Enablement organization—hiring, developing, and retaining top talent across both teams.
• Lead and mentor a high-performing team of strategy and operations professionals (including Commercial Enablement/Legal Operations experts).
• Set clear performance goals, expectations, and development plans, ensuring the team's objectives are directly aligned with legal operations' strategic goals for efficiency and technological advancement.
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement, actively identifying, defining, and rolling out new, innovative operational processes across the entire Legal team.

• Oversee and drive the implementation of new tools and systems across the function.
• Define, pilot, and roll out AI-powered processes for high-volume legal workflows, focusing on leveraging Artificial Intelligence in legal workflows.
• Own, manage, and optimize the legal technology and tools used by the team, ensuring a seamless and integrated tech stack (e.g., contract creation, e-signature workflows like DocuSign, matter management and intake systems).
• Advance workflow automation, including designing and implementing scalable, efficient processes and organizational models.
• Define, build, and maintain 'smart' self-service knowledge portals to serve as the primary resource for internal stakeholders' legal inquiries.

• Develop and implement metrics and trends on key data, providing reporting to measure results and guide decision-making.
• Track, analyze, and report on performance indicators for the Legal Organization's output and measurable commercial impact.
• Collaborate directly with Commercial Sales teams to align legal data and tooling (including CRM systems like Salesforce) with commercial pipeline tracking and deal close metrics.
• Design and implement a function-wide legal data strategy, including dashboards, performance tracking, and executive reporting.

• 10+ years of legal or legal operations experience with significant time in a leadership role, ideally in a high-growth, multi-jurisdictional environment.
• Proven leader with a strong track record of building and mentoring high-performing teams, and a focus on people development.
• Deep familiarity with legal operations, including function analytics, process mapping, workflow automation, operational efficiency, cost control, and legal technology implementation.
• Strong operator with a builder's mindset: comfortable setting vision, establishing structure where none exists, and designing scalable processes to support rapid iteration.
• Passionate about using data to drive thoughtful decision-making and possessing the ability to translate complex operational issues into clear, actionable guidance.
• Collaborative partner who works well with Legal, Product, Engineering, and Commercial stakeholders.
• Experience with vendor management is highly desirable.

The annual base salary range for this role is $245,000.00 - $315,000.00; to learn more about our compensation philosophy, please click here. This role is based out of our New York office (preferred), with San Francisco as an alternative location. We have a hybrid workplace and value in-person collaboration; we do not offer remote-only roles. 

Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion commitments 

Our unique approach is a product of our diverse perspectives. This diversity of backgrounds and cultures is essential in helping us maintain our momentum. Our business and technical challenges are unique, and we need as many different voices as possible to join us in solving them - voices like yours. No matter who you are or where you’re from, we welcome you to be your true self at Adyen. 

Studies show that women and members of underrepresented communities apply for jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. Does this sound like you? If so, Adyen encourages you to reconsider and apply. We look forward to your application!

What’s next?

Ensuring a smooth and enjoyable candidate experience is critical for us. We aim to get back to you regarding your application within 5 business days. Our interview process tends to take about 4 weeks to complete, but may fluctuate depending on the role. Learn more about our hiring process here. Don’t be afraid to let us know if you need more flexibility.

Adyen is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, marital status or any legally protected status.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

This role is based out of our New York (preferred) or San Francisco office. We are an office-first company and value in-person collaboration; we do not offer remote-only roles.