Role Overview
IoniaPay is seeking a licensed, highly motivated, and operationally focused Associate Corporate Counsel to support the company’s expanding fintech payments platform, including payment orchestration, wallet infrastructure, merchant acquiring relationships, sponsor bank partnerships, and regulated financial services activities. We are a high-growth Series A start-up with lots if room for growth.
This role blends traditional in-house counsel responsibilities with legal operations leadership. The Associate Counsel will draft and negotiate complex commercial agreements while building scalable legal infrastructure, managing regulatory workflows, and supporting cross-functional initiatives across Compliance, Risk, Product, Operations, and Executive Leadership. The ideal candidate is business-minded, execution-oriented, and comfortable operating in a high-growth fintech environment.
Core Responsibilities
Commercial Agreements
• Draft, review, and redline complex commercial agreements, including sponsor bank agreements, reseller agreements, enterprise merchant agreements, Master Services Agreements, product addenda, NDAs, and strategic partnership agreements.
• Partner with Sales, Operations, and Executive Leadership to accelerate deal velocity while maintaining risk discipline.
• Ensure contracts align with BSA/AML, KYC, OFAC, GLBA, PCI-DSS, and related regulatory requirements.
• Maintain and improve contract templates, fallback clause matrices, and standardized playbooks.
• Manage full contract lifecycle from drafting through execution and renewal tracking.
Legal Operations & Outside Counsel Management
• Manage and scope outside counsel engagements, ensuring cost efficiency and strategic use of external resources.
• Reduce external legal spend through internal drafting and structured escalation frameworks.
• Review, track, and reconcile legal invoices and budgets.
• Implement legal intake processes and workflow systems to support scaling.
• Maintain clause libraries and internal legal playbooks to streamline negotiations.
Corporate Governance & Filings
• Coordinate corporate filings and annual reporting requirements.
• Maintain corporate records, minute books, and governance documentation.
• Support equity documentation and capitalization table coordination.
• Assist with preparation of board materials, written consents, and governance summaries.
Dataroom & Documentation Management
• Organize and maintain legal document repositories.
• Ensure investor, lender, and enterprise diligence readiness.
• Track contract deviations and maintain structured risk exposure summaries.
• Develop and standardize documentation processes for scalability and audit readiness.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Provide structured legal guidance to Sales, Product, Compliance, Risk, and Operations.
• Support vendor contract review and negotiation alongside Product and Operations.
• Coordinate with Compliance on regulatory-adjacent documentation and audit requirements.
• Prepare concise risk summaries and escalation memoranda for executive review.
Qualifications
• J.D. from an accredited law school.
• Licensed attorney in good standing in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• 2–5 years of legal experience, preferably in fintech, payments, financial services, or a related regulatory environment.
• Strong contract drafting, redlining, and negotiation skills.
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple complex agreements simultaneously.
• Highly organized, detail-oriented, and process-driven.
• Business-oriented, pragmatic approach to risk management.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, startup or growth-stage environment.
Preferred Qualifications
• Experience working with sponsor banks, payment processors, ISOs, or PayFac models.
• Familiarity with financial regulatory frameworks including BSA/AML, KYC, OFAC, GLBA, and PCI-DSS.
• Experience building legal processes or managing legal operations functions.
• Exposure to investor diligence processes or capital raise support.