Senior Legal Counsel

Listing snippet
Dubai-based payments technology company is hiring a Senior Legal Counsel to join its growing in-house legal team leading the commercial legal function and managing a small team across its acquiring payouts and payment gateway business.

Role overview
Our client is a fast-growing payments technology company building out its Dubai hub. Due to expansion the legal team is looking to hire a Senior Legal Counsel to lead the commercial legal function from its Dubai office with two direct reports: a Legal Counsel being hired alongside this role and an existing team member. The role sits above all commercial agreements allocates work across the team and takes the complex high-value and non-standard matters. The successful candidate will advise across the full payments lifecycle from merchant onboarding and acquiring through to card scheme banking and payment service provider relationships and will become the teams go-to on how payments work. This is a great opportunity for a senior payments lawyer to join a fintech business at an exciting stage of growth.

Key responsibilities

• Draft review and negotiate merchant acquiring PSP and partner agreements
• Own the standard merchant agreement and wider contract templates as products evolve
• Negotiate agreements with acquiring banks card schemes and alternative payment method providers
• Act as the senior escalation point on complex or high-value agreements including supplier technology and SaaS contracts
• Advise product and commercial teams on new products markets and cross-border partnerships
• Work with Compliance on licensing AML and card scheme rules as they arise on commercial deals
• Advise on technology SaaS and data protection terms within commercial agreements
• Manage and develop a team of two allocating work across the commercial contracts portfolio
• Set the commercial contracting strategy: playbooks templates risk thresholds and escalation routes

Candidate profile

• Qualified lawyer with approximately 8 years PQE
• Strong payments experience essential ideally across acquiring PSPs e-money or payment institutions
• Currently in-house in fintech or payments (essential)
• Proven team management experience: has line-managed junior lawyers and allocated work
• Exposure to high-risk merchant verticals such as iGaming highly beneficial
• Strong commercial contract drafting and negotiation skills
• Based in the UAE strongly preferred; UK or European training welcome
• Relocation considered only where the overall package stays within budget