Senior Legal Counsel, Commercial, IP & AI
Cardiff, London or Remote (UK)
We’re waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking. With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers!
We’re not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo.
We're looking for a Senior Legal Counsel, Commercial, IP & AI to join our UK Legal team at Monzo and help us build one of the best, most innovative banks in the world.
You will report to Monzo’s Principal Legal Counsel, Commercial, IP & AI in the UK Legal team, which forms part of our wider Legal & Board Governance Collective.
This role will have day-to-day responsibility for advising on commercial contracts, IP & AI matters for our UK business. You’ll lead on a wide range of legal matters with opportunities for growth in role as the business scales.
In this role, you will work at all levels in the organisation and in close partnership with a wide-range of stakeholders including our Marketing, Procurement, Third Party Risk Management, Data Protection, Security, Risk & Control and Compliance teams. Your clients will span all collectives of Monzo’s business, from Operations to Brand and everything in between.
No two days are the same in Monzo’s Legal team. This is not your typical legal role; so we’re not looking for a typical person.
On any given day you may be advising on a sports sponsorship, or the launch of the Monzo book, or a material outsourcing agreement, or the implementation of artificial intelligence technology - you’ll need to be curious and keen to learn.
Ultimately, we’re looking for a collaborative problem-solver with exceptional technical expertise who is willing to roll up their sleeves to help deliver products and services that delight our customers, raise standards, and contribute to our mission.
If this sounds like you, then please get in touch.
Key responsibilities
- Leading on commercial contracts, including:
- directly drafted and negotiated yourself; and
- supported by our experienced panel of commercial legal contractors, whose work, delegated by you, you will supervise.
- Working (as part of the UK Legal team) alongside our colleagues in our Group Commercial Legal team on:
- developing and implementing processes and procedures to increase the efficiency and scalability of commercial legal advice across Monzo, including workflows, playbooks and precedents, and the use of new technologies; and
- delivering training, sharing insights from your work, and helping educate others on commercial contracts.
- Supporting the delivery of our intellectual property strategy (including working with our external advisers on clearance searches, registrations and oppositions).
- Being a subject matter expert on AI related matters (including the regulation of and contracting for AI).
- Managing relationships with our external legal counsel and alternative legal service providers and contractors, ensuring we are optimising our legal spend for greatest impact.
Qualifications
- You have around 5 years plus of relevant post qualification experience (or equivalent), having ideally spent time in private practice, and/or in-house at a high-growth technology company, and/or in-house at a bank and/or other financial institution.
- You have deep experience in all aspects of contract law, and have a genuine interest in commercial contracts; it’s not just your job but something you’re proud to be a geek about. You’re comfortable explaining the difference between contract terms (conditions, warranties, indemnities, and representations) and negotiating your way through tricky legal issues including service credits, service levels, termination rights and liability provisions, among others.
- You have some experience advising on intellectual property related matters (copyright and trade marks in particular).
- You have some experience in artificial intelligence, particularly key legal issues related to the use of generative artificial intelligence.
- You have familiarity with the use of legal technology, including generative AI systems and contract lifecycle management platforms.
- You have some experience of financial services regulation as it relates to commercial contracts (such as material outsourcings, digital operational resilience and operational continuity).
- You have some experience in the transactional elements of data protection, including negotiating data sharing agreements, data processing agreements, and standard contractual clauses.
- You are a strategic thinker, a strong communicator and a keen problem solver who can recommend solutions that balance business and risk perspectives.
- You are willing to jump in and handle a wide range of legal issues that may arise even outside your core areas of expertise in an enthusiastic, proactive, and resourceful manner, and can sensibly assess when best to engage external counsel in a cost‑effective way.
- You are comfortable operating at all levels of the organisation and liaising with a variety of internal and external stakeholders.
- You enjoy horizon scanning, proactively assessing risks, and quickly identifying and independently implementing mitigating actions.
- You have a dynamic and entrepreneurial approach and are comfortable with the ambiguity of a fast‑paced and rapidly‑evolving environment.
- You welcome diverse perspectives, think rigorously and critically and aren’t afraid to challenge assumptions.
- You have an open and curious mind, are passionate about the intersection of banking and technology and are excited to join us for the next stage of our journey at Monzo!
Benefits
- £110,000 base salary (dependent on experience) + Incentive Awards tied to your performance + Benefits
- We can sponsor visas
- This role can be based in our London office, but we’re open to distributed working within the UK (with ad‑hoc meetings in London)
- We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team
- Learning budget of £1,000 a year for books, training courses and conferences
Equal opportunities for everyone
Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we’re making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we’re embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status.
If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage.
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