General Counsel @ Neo Financial

Counselwell Inc.; Calgary; Hybrid; CAD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in stock options

Flexible health benefits

21 days PTO + holidays

Life insurance

Parental top-up & equity vesting

Job summary

Neo Financial in Canada seeks a strategic General Counsel to lead a growing legal team and shape governance for a fintech platform. You will recruit top talent, design scalable processes, and partner with executives to balance risk with growth. The role emphasizes leveraging AI to scale legal operations.

You will sit on the executive team, influence product and market decisions, and ensure compliance across regulatory regimes while driving long-term value creation for shareholders.

Qualifications

• LLB/JD, called to the bar in any Canadian province.
• Significant in-house experience, including in a leadership and team-building capacity
• Experience with or appetite to learn financial services regulation, fintech, banking, AML, compliance
• Based in Canada; we work in-person

Responsibilities

• Lead a high performance Legal team and scale the function.
• Recruit great people and build durable processes.
• Partner with the business to manage risk and enable growth.
• Incorporate AI into team workflows and strategy.

Skills

Leadership

Talent development

Business partner mindset

Regulatory experience

Education

LLB/JD, called to the bar in any Canadian province

Job description

Join us to build a more rewarding financial future for all Canadians

At Neo, we’re on a mission to build a more rewarding financial future for all Canadians. Life at a rapidly scaling tech startup isn’t for everyone. It’s complex, fast-paced, high-pressure, but also incredibly fulfilling. Since its founding in 2019, Neo has gained incredible traction and is one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in Canada.

The Honest Version of This Job

Neo processes millions of financial transactions for Canadians every year. We're launching new credit products, closing capital markets transactions, navigating regulators across multiple jurisdictions, and building infrastructure that didn't exist five years ago. We move fast and legal needs to move with us.

Our experience shows that exceptional legal leadership transcends mere legal knowledge. We value strategic partners who champion innovation by proactively designing scalable governance frameworks and enabling safe, accelerated business growth.

If you've spent your career being the person in the room that people don’t quite know what to do with, we'd like to talk.

What You're Walking Into

Neo is one of Canada's fastest-growing companies, serving over one million Canadians with credit cards, savings, mortgages, and rewards. We're a software and data company operating at the intersection of technology and financial services, which means the legal surface area is genuinely interesting and uniquely complex.

You’ll lead a high performance Legal team, this is not a role where you inherit a mature function and optimize it. The job is to build, to recruit great people, build durable processes, figure out how to use AI to scale what your team can do, and make sure that as Neo grows, the legal function grows with it and not behind it.

You’ll sit on the executive team. When we're evaluating a new product, a new partnership, a new market, you're in the room before the decision is made not after.

What This Job Actually Requires

You are a leader first.

You develop talent, hold people to high standards, and create an environment where your team can do the best work of their careers. The lawyers who report to you should be better for having worked for you.

You know how to build.

You've built or scaled a legal function before, hired people, designed processes, figured out how to do more with less. You know what it feels like to be the one who creates the infrastructure versus the one who runs it.

You think like a business partner.

You understand that managing risk doesn't mean stopping things — it means finding the path through. You're as accountable for Neo's growth as you are for Neo's protection.

You're genuinely excited about AI.

Not as a buzzword. You're using it, thinking about it, and building it into how your team works. We're not looking for someone open to AI, we're looking for someone ahead of it.

You're formidable.

Our board includes people with deep legal backgrounds. When you're in that room, you hold your own, not because you out-credential them, but because your judgment is sound and your thinking is clear.

What We're Not Looking For

We are building something different than the traditional legal model where the function acts as a gatekeeper. This role is not ideal for a legal professional who prefers to act strictly as an individual contributor over leading and scaling a team, or for those who require a fully pre-defined roadmap before beginning execution. Given the rapid pace of change, this environment is not suited for someone who finds the necessary ambiguity of an evolving high growth company to be draining rather than driving.

The Compensation Reality

Role

This role offers a substantial compensation package designed to align your success directly with Neo's trajectory and ensure you are deeply invested in our long-term value creation. Your total rewards package is structured around three key components:

A competitive base salary (the cash component for immediate stability).

A cash-based Short Term Incentive Plan (STIP) to reward disciplined execution and collective velocity in achieving key company milestones.

Meaningful equity (options) that provides significant long-term upside and aligns your financial success directly with Neo's growth.

We seek leaders who prioritize owning a piece of the future we are building. This alignment means that as the company thrives, so do you, making the role a partnership in our collective growth rather than just a traditional employment arrangement. If this model of shared upside and direct impact resonates, you are the kind of builder we are looking for.

The Basics

• LLB/JD, called to the bar in any Canadian province
• Significant in-house experience, including in a leadership and team-building capacity
• Experience with or appetite to learn financial services regulation, fintech, banking, AML, compliance
• Based in Canada; we work in-person

What does life as an Owner at Neo Include?

You will redefine the financial landscape with top talent in Canada to help everyday Canadians win, and grow quickly while doing it

• Ownership structure that enables you to share in our path to victory
• Earn BIG with our short term incentive plans (STIP)
• Collaborating with the brightest minds to build something meaningful, united by a shared commitment to innovation, curiosity, and excellence
• Flexible health benefits & life insurance
• 21 Days PTO + stat holidays, and personal leave
• Health & personal spending accounts
• A wide variety of discounts through our partner network
• Access to early use of products and discounts on fixed-term Neo mortgages
• Parental top-up & equity vesting during long term leave
• Neo night events
• Company wide huddles, and education

Working At Neo

The people who thrive at Neo are resourceful, growth-oriented, and driven to win. We hold ourselves to high standards because we’re on a mission that matters: to build a more rewarding financial future for all Canadians. As individuals and as a team, we constantly challenge ourselves and each other to raise the bar and deliver exceptional experiences for our customers. Our commitment to customer success drives everything we do, from building world-class products to providing exceptional support at every step of their journey. If this resonates with you, keep reading.

We trust, respect, and support each other. This means honest conversations, constructive input, and empowering each other to move fast and think big. You’ll be surrounded by people who push you to be your best. We primarily collaborate in person across our Calgary, Winnipeg, and Toronto offices, where ideas move quickly and teams build momentum together. As we continue to scale and evolve, we’re looking for builders, innovators, and problem solvers who thrive on challenge–people who would rather blaze a trail through uncertainty than follow a well-paved path.

All team members have a stake in Neo’s success and earn meaningful equity through stock options. This ownership mindset is at the heart of everything we do — when Neo grows, we all grow. If you’ve heard that Neo employees work hard, it’s true. We hold ourselves accountable for delivering on our commitments to our customers, partners, and each other. Working at Neo means taking ownership of your work and driving results, knowing that your contributions directly impact the company’s success.

We believe in equal opportunity and are committed to creating an inclusive climate where everyone can thrive. Customers trust us with their finances, so successful candidates for this position will be required to undergo a security screening, including a criminal records check and a credit check.

By continuing with your application, you agree to the Candidate Privacy Notice , which guides how we process your personal information for the purpose of your application.

Neo Financial leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to reinforce our candidate evaluation process, including the initial assessment of applications and screening of candidates. These tools support our recruitment team; however, all final hiring decisions are made by humans and are not based exclusively on automated processing. If you require further information regarding our data processing practices, please contact us.

We are hiring for an open, vacant position.