Senior Legal Counsel

When travelers are searching for a hotel, we want the obvious choice to be trivago! By comparing prices from major booking sites, we’re making it easy for people to find hotels they want at a price they’ll love. In the lively city of Düsseldorf, we seize opportunities to learn everyday, innovate, and make an enduring mark on the travel industry. A career at trivago is a journey designed for people who crave continuous development and want to thrive in a high-performing team. Here you will find those who aren’t afraid of change but rather embrace it, turning every challenge into a pathway for growth. Join trivago, work with a great team, and grow with us!

Join us in making a difference

Our Legal team is the guardian of trivago’s compliance and legal integrity across global markets. As Senior Legal Counsel, you’ll play a leading role in building commercial partnerships, ensuring legal compliance, and setting new standards for operational excellence in a rapidly evolving tech environment. Your strategic legal expertise will help navigate regulatory landscapes and mitigate risks across multiple jurisdictions.

Your impact will be felt across the entire organization as you tackle significant legal projects tied to company objectives. With your advanced knowledge and autonomous approach, you’ll deliver solutions that balance legal compliance with business goals. Ready to apply your expertise where it truly matters? Join our collaborative team and help shape trivago’s future success in the global travel industry.

How you’ll make an impact:

• Lead high-value negotiations: Draft, review, and negotiate major commercial agreements—including SaaS contracts, insertion orders, vendor contracts, and Data Processing Agreements (DPAs).
• Accelerate business growth: Partner with Sales, Procurement, and B2B teams to close complex, cross-border deals, balancing business opportunity and legal risk.
• Advance legal operations: Create contract templates, playbooks, and self-service tools that make compliance and contracting faster and easier across the organization.
• Guide regulatory strategy: Stay ahead of legal developments by advising on compliance with the Platform-to-Business (P2B) Regulation, Digital Services Act (DSA), and Digital Markets Act (DMA).
• Champion legal education: Design and deliver targeted training to boost legal literacy and confident decision-making throughout trivago.
• Resolve escalations: Advise on escalated customer, regulator, and partner issues where your judgement is crucial.
• Expand your scope: Take on emerging and interdisciplinary topics—such as intellectual property, privacy, AI regulation, and litigation management.

What you’ll need to thrive:

• Qualified legal expertise: Fully qualified to practice law, having passed the German Second State Examination. You are also admitted to practice law in any U.S. state or hold a qualification from an EU jurisdiction, all with outstanding academic results.
• Extensive experience: At least 5 years’ post-qualification experience, combining top-tier law firm and in-house roles, specifically within the tech or scale-up sector.
• Commercial contracting mastery: Proven track record independently leading complex B2B negotiations and contract drafting in a global business context.
• Generalist mindset: Solid grounding in commercial law, complemented by experience or strong interest in areas like IP, privacy, litigation, and emerging tech regulation.
• Exceptional communication: Able to explain nuanced legal concepts in clear, accessible English to a global audience.
• Ownership mindset: Proactive, solutions-focused, and comfortable steering projects both independently and collaboratively.
• Growth-driven: Thrive in dynamic, often ambiguous environments, and see change as an opportunity to drive legal and business value.

Stand out with:

• Professional experience in the travel industry, in particular in the online travel agency (OTA) business
• In-depth understanding of SEC regulatory requirements, provisions, and compliance standards.
• Proven track record navigating P2B, DSA, and DMA regulatory complexities.
• Passion for experimentation with legal tech, AI tools, and scalable internal legal systems.

Worried about missing a few requirements? Still apply, and express your motivation as you may just be the right candidate for this or other roles!

What you can look forward to:

As you grow, so do we.
This is why at trivago, we prioritize your development, offer personalized coaching through Nilo, and provide workshops, educational meetups, conferences, free online learning courses, and access to a fully-equipped campus library.

Moving to join us?
No problem. You can count on the visa support from our talent support team, a relocation package, interest-free newcomer loan, free language classes, regular team and company-wide events to build experiences together.

Life happens.
We offer self-determined vacation (with a minimum of 25 vacation days), flexible working hours, up to 2 work from home days weekly. Additionally you can work remotely from a different location, within Germany or selected countries abroad for up to 20 days per year. You also get free access to the Heycare platform for personalized nanny assistance, and an on-campus kids room.

Enjoy your office days.
Use your daily canteen budget to share lunch with colleagues in our canteen, help yourself to complimentary snacks and drinks in our kitchens, choose from a variety of fitness options with our on-site gym, sports classes, and Urban Sports Club membership, and enjoy the comfort of ergonomic desks and focused work areas.

Thank you for considering a career at trivago! Our commitment to fostering an inclusive and enriching environment for all talents is at the heart of what we do. Should any questions arise before you apply, feel free to reach out to us at joinus@trivago.com. Join us in our mission to make a positive impact on global travel, we look forward to your application!