Circle
Senior Legal Counsel
Job Summary
This role involves managing the full contract lifecycle, providing legal guidance on commercial agreements, and supporting privacy compliance, particularly GDPR and CCPA. The senior legal counsel will collaborate with sales, customer success, and support teams to ensure legal and regulatory adherence as the company scales. The position requires legal experience in a tech or SaaS environment, with strong communication skills and adaptability in a fast-paced, remote setting. The role offers opportunities for growth into areas like privacy and security standards, along with comprehensive employee benefits and a focus on remote work and company culture.
Required Skills
Benefits
Job Description
About Us
Circle is building the world’s leading all-in-one platform for online communities. We make it possible for creators, coaches, educators, and businesses to bring together their audience with engaging discussions, live streams, events, chat, courses, and payments — all in one place, all under their own brand.
We’re proud to be a fully remote company of around 180 (and growing!) team members from 30+ countries around the world. We seek exceptional individuals around the world, set them up to do the best work of their lives, and in turn, create a meaningful impact in their own lives. We don't track hours, but we do manage for high expectations very closely. We collaborate across time zones, are highly async, and like to document a lot.
Twice a year, we bring the whole company together in beautiful places around the world for our company offsites. So far, we’ve hosted offsites in Turkey, Portugal, Mexico, Thailand, Colombia, Italy, Ireland, and more, with still more to come!
About the role
We’re on the hunt for a Senior Legal Counsel to become Circle’s very first in-house legal hire. If you love moving fast and giving clear, practical advice that helps teams get things done—this could be your spot.
In the first 3-6 months, this role will focus mostly on commercial law, especially helping out with sales and contract renewals. Down the line, there will be room to grow into areas like privacy (think CCPA and GDPR), product, and security compliance (SOC 2).
Circle is an incredibly fast-growing company —we’re adding new markets, building new products, and scaling a global team. You’ll have a front-row seat to all of it, and your work will be a key part of what keeps us moving forward.
What you'll be doing
- Own and manage the full contract lifecycle — draft, review, and maintain foundational commercial documents for our products and services, such as terms of use, product and support policies, and customer contracts and disclosures.
- Act as a key point of contact to the Sales, Customer Success, and Customer Support teams for questions arising during the RFP stage, contract negotiation and renewals, customer onboarding, or other changes in the product releases and GTM function that may have implications for the way we interact with our customers.
- Help evaluate and implement a contract lifecycle management tool (e.g. Ironclad) to streamline legal operations.
- Build scalable and effective legal processes and resources, including delivering training, developing guides/playbooks, and creating new templates.
- Help Circle take on new challenges and business initiatives in a thoughtful, compliant, and efficient way.
- Support Circle’s privacy program compliance, including maintaining GDPR compliance, and improve the effectiveness of critical privacy compliance processes.
- Stay up to date on relevant regulations, standards, and best practices, and help adapt Circle’s governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) program accordingly.
What you'll need to be successful
- At least 4-6 years of relevant legal experience, including time spent in-house at startup or growth-stage company, ideally in the tech/SaaS space.
- Strong work ethic and team-player mindset, with a willingness to do the job that needs to be done at any given time and adapt as business priorities change and new challenges emerge.
- Proven ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment with a high level of autonomy and accountability.
- Exceptional communication skills (both written and oral) and the ability to explain complex ideas in a succinct and digestible manner.
- JD from an accredited law school and admission to the bar in the relevant jurisdiction.
- Strong alignment with our values. Find our values on our career page if you haven’t read up on them yet.
- You are proficient in English (spoken, written, and reading) at a CEFR Level C2 / ILR Level 5.
Bonus points
- You have extensive knowledge of GRC best practices for SaaS organizations.
- You’ve helped a SaaS product achieve compliance with one or more security standards before (i.e. SOC 2 or ISO 27001).
$170,000 - $200,000 USD per year
The cash compensation range shown is a starting point. In addition to equity, benefits and perks, your cash compensation is subject to an annual review and increase on a once per year basis.
The fun stuff
- Fully remote: work from anywhere in the world!
- Autonomy and trust to do your job: we care about outcomes over everything else.
- Paid time away: all employees are given 35 days of PTO annually. We also offer a paid sabbatical after 5 years.
- Generous U.S. benchmarked compensation and startup equity no matter where you are in the world.*
- Awesome medical coverage with 100% coverage for you and your family, or medical reimbursement options where applicable!*
- Parental leave for parents expanding their family, or just starting one.
- Home office stipend to help you get up and running.
- Learning & development stipend to help you level up your professional skills.
- Annual bonus potential for roles that don't already receive variable income or commission.
- Company retreats: Twice a year, the Circle team gets together for a fully paid company retreat in incredible places around the world! We’ve had past retreats in Colombia, Portugal, and Mexico, with more planned on the horizon.
- Check out our Careers page for more.
*Your role, location and unique circumstance may affect this.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
As a fully-remote international company, diversity is baked into our DNA. Here’s how our CEO, Sid Yadav, frames our hiring mission: “let’s find talent in underserved and under-represented corners of the world, set them up to do the best work of their lives, and in turn, change their life.” To achieve this hiring mission, we offer competitive U.S. benchmarked compensation no matter where someone’s located in the world, and we proactively seek candidates who expand representation of backgrounds, cultures and lived experiences in our teams.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Circle is an equal opportunity employer and as such, we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws. If you require any accommodations during the recruitment process, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.
How We Use Candidate Data
At Circle, we are committed to protecting your personal information. As a job applicant, the personal data you provide to us is collected and processed in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This notice outlines the types of personal information we collect, the purpose for collecting it, and your rights.
Information We Collect: We collect the following categories of personal information from job applicants:
- Contact information (such as name, email address, phone number)
- Employment history and qualifications
- Education history
- References and any other information you choose to share with us during the application process
Purpose of Collection: We collect this information for the following purposes:
- To assess your qualifications and suitability for the position
- To communicate with you during the recruitment process
- To comply with legal and regulatory obligations
Your Rights Under GDPR and CCPA: You have the following rights regarding your personal information:
- The right to request access to the personal information we hold about you.
- The right to request the deletion of your personal information, subject to certain legal exceptions.
- The right to opt out of the sale of your personal information (Note: We do not sell personal information).
For more information about how we handle your personal data or to exercise your rights, please refer to our full Privacy Policy.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this privacy notice.
Circle
A platform for building and managing online communities, offering tools for discussions, events, and member engagement.
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