Deputy General Counsel

Ethena Labs; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Ethena Labs is seeking a dedicated lawyer to own day-to-day product, legal and compliance advice for Ethena Pay, a live digital dollar-powered payments consumer product.

You will work with our Compliance team to ensure program practicality, negotiate with partners, review product flows and lead licensing strategy as we expand into new markets. This hands-on role offers significant room to grow as the product and function scale.

Qualifications

• Significant legal experience in fintech or payments, with meaningful in-house time.
• Experience as counsel to a consumer-facing app, and negotiating with crypto-native card issuers and ramp providers.
• Hands-on experience with a payments or fintech compliance function.
• Track record negotiating payments vendor and partner agreements and licensing work.
• Pragmatic, commercial judgement and clear writing.
• Interest in, or experience with, stablecoins and crypto payments.

Responsibilities

• Be the day-to-day legal and compliance counsel for Ethena Pay: terms, disclosures, marketing review, privacy and product launches.
• Map and maintain the regulatory perimeter and obligations register across the markets we serve.
• Oversee and strengthen the compliance framework with our Compliance team: AML/KYC, sanctions, complaints and regulator or law-enforcement requests.
• Negotiate and manage agreements with our card issuer, ramp providers, KYC and infrastructure partners.
• Lead licensing and registration strategy and applications, working with outside counsel and regulators.
• Build the playbooks and, over time, the team behind the function.

Skills

Fintech legal experience

In-house counsel

Consumer app counsel

Vendor agreements

Regulatory compliance

Crypto payments

Job description

Our flagship product, USDe, is a digital dollar which became the fastest-growing dollar crypto asset in history when it scaled from zero to $15b in 18 months.

Ethena also developed a GENIUS Act-ready payment stablecoin, in partnership with BlackRock. USDtb is now issued by Anchorage Digital Bank after becoming the first payment stablecoin issued under U.S. federal government supervision.

Ethena Whitelabel is the largest whitelable stablecoin product in the world, offering applications, chains, wallets or exchanges the infrastructure to launch their own dollar asset on Ethena's back-end infrastructure with our stablecoin products as the core reserve assets.

Ethena just launched Ethena Pay, the best mobile neobanking experience to save, send and spend, built directly on Ethena’s existing products. Ethena Pay offers free onramps in local currency and dollars, free and instant movement of money, zero FX fee mark up, the highest spend cashback in the market and the highest sustainable rewards on dollar balances via Ethena, alongside a multi-currency fiat account and a self-custodial stablecoin wallet in a single interface. The product is built on stablecoin and blockchain rails, while abstracting away the underlying technical complexity to deliver a simple, intuitive experience built around familiar user actions

Through these offerings, Ethena Labs is not just creating new financial products; we are building foundational infrastructure for a more open, efficient, and interconnected global financial system

About the Role

Ethena Pay is a live digital dollar-powered payments consumer product, and you will be a core dedicated lawyer. You will own day-to-day product, legal and compliance advice for the product, work closely with our Compliance team to make sure our program works in practice, negotiate with the partners our product runs on, review product flows and lead our licensing strategy as we expand into new markets. It is a hands-on role with significant room to grow as the product and the function scale.

Responsibilities

• Be the day-to-day legal and compliance counsel for Ethena Pay: terms, disclosures, marketing review, privacy and product launches.
• Map and maintain the regulatory perimeter and obligations register across the markets we serve.
• Oversee and strengthen the compliance framework with our Compliance team: AML/KYC, sanctions, complaints and regulator or law-enforcement requests.
• Negotiate and manage agreements with our card issuer, ramp providers, KYC and infrastructure partners.
• Lead licensing and registration strategy and applications, working with outside counsel and regulators.
• Build the playbooks and, over time, the team behind the function.

Required Skills

• Significant legal experience in fintech or payments, with meaningful in-house time.
• Experience as counsel to a consumer-facing app (neobank, crypto wallet, card program or similar), and direct experience negotiating with crypto-native card issuers and ramp providers.
• Hands-on experience working with or overseeing a payments or fintech compliance function.
• A track record negotiating payments vendor and partner agreements and delivering licensing work.
• Pragmatic, commercial judgement and clear writing.
• Interest in, or experience with, stablecoins and crypto payments.