Impact and Responsibilities

You will directly support Shieldpay's growth by ensuring legal enables, rather than constrains, commercial activity. This role sits across both commercial execution and strategic scaling: you will be partnering with revenue-generating teams to increase contracting capacity, improve deal velocity and remove legal process bottlenecks as the business scales, you will safeguard the business through corporate governance workstreams, and also be crucial to our legal automation initiative to build a modern, tech-driven legal function. This role is a practical opportunity to act as a genuine commercial partner to the business, giving you direct ownership of a broad legal portfolio spanning corporate, commercial, and compliance work.

• Commercial contracting: own and manage the end-to-end client contracting process, proactively identifying and mitigating bottlenecks to ensure seamless business continuity. You will work closely with our Contracts Manager to oversee deal flow, maintain consistency in our legal approach, and drive highly efficient contract turnaround times. Additionally, you will partner directly with front-line commercial teams to deliver pragmatic, agile, and solutions-focused legal advice that enables business growth.

• High-value and complex legal support: provide critical support on high-stakes, bespoke, and higher-risk contractual negotiations for key institutional clients and strategic payment accounts. You will also assist on complex litigation-related client structures and dispute management.

• Corporate governance: support a range of corporate and strategic legal matters including corporate governance, cap table management, share option scheme maintenance, and shareholder documentation. This role also involves providing ad hoc legal support during funding rounds and strategic corporate events, alongside overseeing corporate housekeeping to ensure strict statutory compliance.

• Legal operations, risk & compliance: support and contribute to our legal automation and legal technology initiatives by developing scalable legal templates, playbooks, and modernising internal workflows. Help to optimise our contract lifecycle management processes, internal legal workflows, and data management systems, while supporting the business on regulatory compliance, GDPR/data protection queries, DSAR responses, and broader internal data governance.

• Employment and general advisory: act as a trusted internal advisor, providing ad hoc support on employment related matters and addressing general day-to-day legal queries from across Shieldpay.

What we're looking for 🔍

• Qualified UK Solicitor with ideally 2–4 years’ PQE

• Strong foundation in drafting and negotiating complex commercial contracts.

• Exposure to corporate work (fundraising, governance, shareholders and cap table management), financial services/fintech, or data protection/GDPR.

• Ability to balance legal risk with business objectives and deliver pragmatic solutions.

• Delivery-focused, calm under pressure, and comfortable managing multiple matters in a fast-paced environment.

• Strong organisational skills and a willingness to take ownership of matters from instruction through to completion

• Skilled at engaging effectively and translating legal risks for non-legal stakeholders.

• Be process driven, naturally curious and genuinely interested in improving systems, workflows, and templates.

Growth and Development 📈

This role is designed to provide broad exposure across commercial, corporate, governance, regulatory and strategic legal matters. You will work directly with the General Counsel and closely with senior stakeholders across the business, gaining experience well beyond a traditional commercial contracts role. For the right individual, there is a clear opportunity to develop into a senior Legal Counsel role and ultimately progress into broader legal leadership responsibilities as Shieldpay continues to grow.

Our Promise: Shieldpay is an equal opportunities employer. For Shieldpay building a fair and transparent workforce begins with the recruitment process that does not discriminate on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, gender reassignment, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, disability or age. We offer flexible working options, such as flexible hours and hybrid work, to support our employees' work-life balance