Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without any hidden fees or compounding interest.
Affirm seeks an outstanding legal leader who can manage multiple responsibilities and tasks in a fast-paced and high-growth environment. The ideal candidate will possess an executive presence that will make them effective and persuasive in dealing with and building relationships with senior management, business executives, regulators, government officials, and customers. This person will help Affirm build scalable tools and processes to sustain a fast-growing global business and will have a proven track record of dealing with complicated policy issues and crafting effective solutions. We are seeking someone with a strong substantive background in key legal policy frameworks relevant to financial services, including lending, payments, privacy, banking, and technology.
What You Will Do
- Lead, counsel and oversee the Affirm legal team involvement with important policy issues affecting Affirm’s lending business and technologies
- In partnership with CEO and CLO, develop and drive Affirm’s regulatory policy agenda, including principles and policies relating to consumer protection, artificial intelligence, fintech regulation, credit and privacy
- Actively engage with, facilitate and maintain relationships on policy issues with regulatory agencies and government officials, customers, suppliers and other policy constituencies
- Deliver pragmatic, opportune, and business-oriented counsel to Affirm’s various clients, customers and internal stakeholders
- Help manage Affirm’s involvement in policy-oriented trade associations, involving senior management, legal department colleagues and others, as appropriate
- Communicate with senior management, legal department colleagues and others on public affairs initiatives and policy initiatives
- Work cross functionally to ensure that policy initiatives are aligned with current and future corporate strategy initiatives; actively monitor and engage with relevant external resources to ensure that Affirm is informed of and well positioned to respond to policy developments
- Help counsel business units on policy implications from business initiatives
- Supervise outside counsel and consultants
- Serve as member of the Chief Legal Officer’s senior leadership team and drive strategic planning and coordinate special projects for the legal department
What We Look For
- JD from a recognized U.S. law school and licensed to practice in California, or eligible for in-house registration
- 12+ years’ broad based experience with a leading financial services or technology company
- Proven executive leader as Associate General Counsel, Deputy General Counsel or General Counsel
- Excellent leadership skills in a high growth environment; a track record of driving for results and building high performing teams
- Excellent drafting and communication skills
- Superior business judgment and the ability to address complex opportunities and issues in creative and effective ways
- Ability to see around corners to identify opportunities and issues in our space and participate fully with the business teams charting future directions
- Significant experience influencing and leading teams on complex legal and policy issues is highly valued as is experience counseling global organizations on policy and compliance issues
- Detail-orientation and ability to balance competing priorities and manage multiple projects simultaneously under deadline pressure
- Excellent oral, written and interpersonal communication skills and the ability to create and sustain lasting relationships with customers, government officials, policy constituencies and management
- Excellent judgment and sense of humor
- Ability to deliver in a demanding and entrepreneurial environment in a timely manner