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Senior Commercial Counsel

Senior Commercial Counsel will structure, draft, and negotiate complex banking, payments, and partnership agreements for a fintech bank. Requires 8+ years legal experience with fintech or banking focus, strong commercial negotiation skills, and ability to build scalable legal templates while partnering cross-functionally with Sales, Risk, and Compliance.

About the job

Responsibilities

  • Own complex agreements end-to-end: Structure, draft, and negotiate complex customer, vendor, and third-party agreements covering a broad range of banking products and services, including agreements related to payments and money movement services and banking partnerships inclusive of deposit account, card, and lending programs.
  • Build and manage legal playbooks and templates that scale: Develop and maintain templates and inventories of contracts, terms of services, notices, and disclosures for the Bank’s products, services, and distribution channels that enable speed without sacrificing quality.
  • Negotiate: Lead negotiations with high-growth fintechs and enterprise customers, balancing commercial priorities with regulatory requirements.
  • Develop strong cross-functional partnerships: Work closely with the Sales and Business teams to understand the Bank’s goals, strategy, and risk tolerance for each deal in order to develop an efficient and risk-based contracting strategy.
  • Expand into additional areas of law: As the fourth member of our growing Legal team, you'll support each other with novel research, product and regulatory advice, exam management, subpoena responses, litigation deliverables, and corporate governance materials.
  • Help us level up how Legal operates: Serve as a thought partner to the business and legal to support Column's ongoing growth through improvements to bank agreements, policies, and legal processes.

Requirements

  • 8+ years as a practicing lawyer; priority given to candidates with law firm experience in a technology transactions or fintech practice and/or in-house experience at a fintech or financial institution.
  • Experience driving complex commercial negotiations.
  • Ability to independently draft and negotiate commercial agreements, with a strong understanding of both contract law and commercial transactions.
  • Comfort with project management, deadlines, and juggling execution across multiple initiatives for multiple stakeholders.

Nice-to-Haves

  • Understanding of traditional commercial banking products and services including ACH and wire transactions, accounts, lending, cards, cash management, sweeps, and check issuance/deposit, among others.
  • Experience in structured finance or with lending products.
  • Understanding of money transmission.

Compensation and Benefits

  • Annual base salary range: $210,000 - $300,000 + equity.
  • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans, including options that are 100% covered by Column for you and 100% covered for your dependents.
  • Comprehensive family planning and fertility benefits via partnership with Carrot, including reimbursement of up to $20,000 in qualified expenses.
  • Up to $2,000 (post-tax) monthly rent subsidy for employees living within 2 miles of Column’s office.
  • FSA and HSA account options to enable use of pre-tax money for medical and dependent care expenses.
  • 401k plan, including self-directed brokerage options.
  • Flexible time-off policy - take the time off that you want and need to relax and recharge.
  • 100% paid parental leave, including 16 weeks for birth mothers, 12 weeks for primary caregivers, and 8 weeks for secondary caregivers.
  • Up to $4,500 in annual reimbursements for backup childcare.
  • Catered lunches and dinners for SF employees.
  • Commuter benefits, including paid transportation to-and-from the office.
  • Regular team building events, including annual offsite.

Skills

Contract Negotiation, Commercial Agreements, Fintech Law, Banking Regulations, Payments Law, Money Transmission, Structured Finance, Legal Playbooks, Project Management

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