Senior Legal Counsel - Employment, Incentives & Pensions

🚀 We’re on a mission to make money work for everyone.

We’re waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking.

After starting as a prepaid card, our product offering has grown a lot in the last 10 years in the UK. As well as personal and business bank accounts, we offer joint accounts, accounts for 16-17 year olds, a free kids account and credit cards in the UK, with more exciting things to come beyond. Our UK customers can also save, invest and combine their pensions with us. 

With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers!

We’re not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo ❤️

Hear from our UK team about what it's like working at Monzo ✨

📍London or Remote UK | 💰£93,500 - £126,500 (based on experience level) + stock options + benefits 

⭐Our Legal team

We're looking for a Senior Legal Counsel - Employment, Incentives & Pensions to join our team at Monzo and help us build one of the best, most innovative banks in the world. This role will have day-to-day responsibility for advising on employment, incentives and pensions (EIP) related matters in a regulated bank environment. This role will report to Monzo’s Director of Legal - EIP and is part of the Group Centre EIP team in the Legal & Board Governance Collective at Monzo, which supports Monzo Group and its operating entities globally. 

In this role, you will work at all levels in the organisation and in close partnership with our People, Reward, Risk & Compliance and Finance teams, as well as in collaboration with senior Legal team stakeholders as the business develops into a matrix organisation. You’ll lead on a wide range of EIP related legal matters with opportunities for growth in role as the business scales in the UK and internationally.  

🔑You’ll play a key role by...

• Providing strategic employment legal advice and commercial solutions on EIP matters impacting the Monzo Group as a whole, as well as its subsidiary legal entities. Work closely and collaboratively with Monzo’s Director of Legal EIP and the other Senior Legal Counsel EIP lawyer, as well as with the broader Group Centre Legal team plus local entity GCs and their teams. 
• Being a trusted adviser and partner to the People team, including in developing policies, procedures, guidance and templates relevant for a range of EIP legal matters.
• Providing EIP advisory legal support to the business as required across the entire employee life cycle - from hiring (including executive service contracts), people processes and departures.
• Managing any contentious EIP legal matters in conjunction with external counsel. 
• Working with Monzo’s Reward team on compensation arrangements and remuneration policies and practices in a bank regulatory compensation framework.
• Providing legal support to the corporate and commercial legal functions, including on TUPE.
• Supporting international projects and matters in the EU and US as the business continues to scale.
• Working proactively and collaboratively with members of the wider Legal, People, Reward, Tax, Risk & Compliance, & Finance Collectives on a variety of EIP related matters.
• Developing and implement internal frameworks, processes and procedures to increase the efficiency and scalability of EIP legal advice across the Monzo Group and its subsidiary entities. 
• Delivering training, share insights from your work, and help educate others on EIP matters.
• Managing relationships with our external legal counsel and work with others in the Collective to ensure we are optimising our legal spend on EIP matters and obtaining best value. 

🤩 We’d love to hear from you if…

• You are an experienced, commercial and pragmatic employment lawyer, with at least 6 years + PQE or equivalent experience.  
• You have an excellent technical grounding in all aspects of employment law, having spent time in private practice, and ideally time in house at a bank and/or other financial institution.
• You have experience advising on employment-related regulatory issues which arise in financial services, such as SMCR and FCA Code of Conduct and wider Remuneration Code matters.
• You have experience of advising on incentive structures including share options, plus an awareness of workplace defined contribution pension arrangements.
• You are a strategic thinker, a strong communicator and a keen problem solver who can recommend solutions that balance business and risk perspectives. 
• You are willing to jump in and handle a wide range of EIP related legal issues that may arise even outside your core areas of expertise in an enthusiastic, proactive, and resourceful manner, and can sensibly assess when best to engage external counsel in a cost-effective way.
• You are comfortable operating at all levels of the organisation up to the Executive and liaising with a variety of internal and external stakeholders.
• You enjoy horizon scanning, proactively assessing risks, and quickly identifying and independently implementing mitigating actions. You are always looking for new ways to improve the efficiency and scalability of legal processes and systems.
• You have a dynamic and entrepreneurial approach and are comfortable with the ambiguity of a fast-paced and rapidly-evolving environment.
• You’ve an open and curious mind, are passionate about the intersection of banking and technology and are excited to join us for the next stage of our journey at Monzo!

Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! Studies show that women and people of colour might hesitate to apply unless they meet every single requirement. At Monzo, we’re dedicated to creating an inclusive and welcoming team. If you’re passionate about this role and keen to learn and grow with us, we encourage you to apply - even if you don’t have everything that's listed just yet. Drop us your application, we’d love to hear from you! In-house experience in financial services is preferred, but is not essential for the right candidate. PQE is a guide only.

🌈 The application journey has 3 key steps

• Recruiter call (potentially followed by an initial call with Director of Legal - EIP)
• First stage 1 hour role specific interview 
• Second stage 1 hour behavioural interview

Our average process takes around 3-4 weeks but we will always work around your availability. You will have the chance to speak to our recruitment team at various points during your process but if you do have any specific questions ahead of this please contact us on business-hiring@monzo.com.

We’ll only close this role once we have enough applications for the next stage. Please submit your application as soon as possible to make sure you don’t miss out.

Your compensation package:

💰£93,500 - £126,500 base salary ➕ stock options

✅ We can sponsor visas 

📍This role can be based in our London office, but we're open to distributed working within the UK (with ad hoc meetings in London).

⏰ We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team

📚Learning budget of £1,000 a year for books, training courses and conferences

➕And much more, see our full list of benefits here

#LI-DH1

Equal opportunities for everyone

Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we’re making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we’re embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog, 2024 Diversity and Inclusion Report and 2024 Gender Pay Gap Report.

We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status.

If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage 😊