Founder's Office (Deal Desk)

Carrerlift; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 2,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Career growth

Direct exposure to founders

Cross-border cases

Lead desk opportunity

Job summary

Dodo Payments seeks a lawyer for the Founder's Office to provide regulatory judgment on merchant acceptance, categories, and deal terms. The role supports real‑time compliance during calls, bridging product, risk, and sales to enable fast, legally sound decisions.

Initially seated with the Founder's Office for cross‑functional input, the desk will evolve under the Compliance team, with review and sign‑off by the Head of Legal, Compliance & Partnerships.

Qualifications

• Qualified lawyer with 1–2 years post‑qualification experience in corporate matters.
• Comfortable starting without predefined processes or templates.
• Clear, fast written communication with non‑lawyers.

Responsibilities

• Join sales and merchant calls to ensure compliance and deliverable commitments.
• Provide regulatory input to onboarding, escalation and deboarding discussions with product and risk teams.
• Address edge cases and propose compliant paths or clear rejections with rationale.
• Help define permissible merchant categories and customer types and conditions.
• Manage contract aspects of deals and day‑to‑day requests using standard legal documents.
• Maintain pricing records to reflect negotiated terms.
• Monitor regulatory and card scheme rule changes and flag impacts.
• Document recurring compliance decisions to avoid repeated escalations.

Job description

About the Opportunity

• This is a lawyer's seat in the Founder's Office at Dodo Payments, a merchant of record carrying compliance responsibility for merchants across global markets. The role brings legal and regulatory judgment to decisions on merchant acceptance, categories, and deal terms, especially for edge cases that don't fit standard templates.
• The Deal Desk is being established to embed compliance into onboarding, escalation, and deboarding decisions alongside product and risk teams, enabling sales to get real‑time compliance answers during calls rather than after.
• For the first three months, the role sits in the Founder's Office to gather cross‑functional input from sales, growth, risk, product, and founders before the desk evolves into a structured function under the Compliance team. Work is reviewed and signed off by the Head of Legal, Compliance & Partnerships.

Role & Responsibilities

• Join sales and merchant calls to ensure compliance, acceptance, or contract promises are legally deliverable.
• Bring the regulatory compliance perspective to merchant onboarding, escalation, and deboarding meetings alongside product and risk teams.
• Work through edge cases: merchants with novel business models, categories, or markets; propose compliant paths or clear rejections with rationale for sign‑off.
• Help define which new merchant categories and customer types can be supported and under what conditions.
• Handle contract‑related aspects of deals and day‑to‑day commercial requests: negotiated merchant terms, partner term updates, vendor onboarding paperwork, etc., using standard legal documentation.
• Maintain the backend pricing table to ensure negotiated terms are accurately recorded and applied.
• Track regulatory and card scheme rule changes relevant to Dodo's markets and flag operational impacts.
• Convert recurring compliance decisions into written positions to avoid repeated escalations.

Skills & Qualifications

Must-Have

• Qualified lawyer with 1-2 years post‑qualification experience in the general corporate team of an Indian or international law firm, or in an in‑house legal team at a company with cross‑border operations.
• Comfortable starting without predefined answers or processes.
• Creative problem‑solving: understanding rules is the baseline; finding workable paths within them is the core task.
• Clear, fast written communication with non‑lawyers (sales, product, partners) to deliver actionable answers.
• Strong spine: desire to close deals but willingness to say no when compliance boundaries are breached, and ability to hold that position under pressure.
• Sound judgment on the limits of authority: decisive on known matters, disciplined about escalating unknowns.
• Interest in payments, cross‑border regulation, and how compliance shapes business offerings. Prior payments exposure is a plus, not required.

Preferred

• Experience in merchant of record models, card scheme rules, or cross‑border payment compliance.

Benefits & Culture Highlights

• Health and Accidental insurances.
• Clear growth path based on performance.
• Direct exposure to founders and cross‑functional decision‑making from day one.
• Hands‑on grounding in live cases involving cross‑border payments regulation and merchant of record structures.
• Opportunity to build and eventually lead the Compliance Deal Desk as it matures.