Global General Counsel & Compliance Leader Remote

Canonical; Netherlands; A distancia; EUR 180.000 - 280.000; Jornada completa

Ventajas ofrecidas por este puesto de trabajo

Twice-yearly team sprints in person

Learning budget USD 2,000 per year

Bi-annual compensation review

Company recognition rewards

40 days annual leave per annum

Maternity and paternity leave

Wellness Platform

Travel opportunities with PriorityPass

Descripción de la vacante

Canonical is seeking a General Counsel to lead its global Legal and Compliance function, reporting to the COO. This role requires exceptional strategic and commercial legal acumen to guide governance, IP, licensing, and compliance across EMEA and the Americas from a remote-first setup.

You will partner with product, engineering, and finance, advise the Board, and build a distributed leadership team to scale as the company grows towards a public listing.

Formación

• Exceptional academic track record from high school and university.
• Law degree, active licence to practice in an EMEA or Americas jurisdiction.
• Substantial senior in-house experience in global technology or software business.
• Proven experience leading a distributed legal team across regions/time zones.
• Track record hiring and developing people and addressing under-performance.
• Experience building or restructuring an in-house legal function.
• Technology experience negotiating commercial technology contracts, including enterprise software/subscriptions, channel agreements, hardware agreements, cloud/services.
• Advising on open source licensing and familiarity with open source communities.
• Experience or readiness for public company governance: listing prep, board support, disclosure and controls.
• Depth in at least two of: data protection/privacy, IP/trademark, export controls/trade, competition, or disputes.
• Confident, articulate communicator with strong English drafting/presentation skills.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility and accountability.
• Willingness to international travel 2–4 times a year.

Responsabilidades

• Lead global Legal and Compliance function across EMEA and the Americas, setting structure and priorities.
• Build and manage management capability: hire/develop managers, set objectives, review performance.
• Set operating cadence: intake of legal work, service expectations, and reporting on workload and risk.
• Own public-market readiness: governance, structure, delegated authority, policies, disclosure controls with Finance.
• Advise CEO/COO/CFO/Board and support in Board meetings.
• Own commercial contracting framework: templates, negotiating positions, escalation process.
• Lead IP and open source licensing strategy, including copyleft and trademarks for Ubuntu and products.
• Own global compliance program: data protection/privacy, export controls, anti-bribery, competition, AI regulation.
• Manage litigation, disputes and regulatory engagement with external counsel and budgets.
• Advise on M&A, partnerships, strategic alliances and financing as the company grows.

Conocimientos

Senior in-house experience

Open source licensing

Commercial contracts

Licensing strategy

Governance

Educación

Law degree and active license

Descripción del empleo

Canonical is seeking a General Counsel to lead its global Legal and Compliance function, reporting to the COO. This role requires exceptional strategic and commercial legal acumen to guide governance, IP, licensing, and compliance across EMEA and the Americas from a remote-first setup.

You will partner with product, engineering, and finance, advise the Board, and build a distributed leadership team to scale as the company grows towards a public listing.