🇬🇧 London (100% in-person)

💰 Competitive (incl. equity)

About Zuba

Careers @ Zuba

About the role

We are looking for a Head of Legal & Regulatory to own the function outright: licensing strategy across every jurisdiction we operate in, the compliance programme that keeps real money moving safely, and the commercial contracts that open new corridors. You’ll be the senior legal and regulatory voice in the company, work directly with the founders, and build the team, starting with a Legal & Regulatory Analyst reporting to you.

This is a rare shape of role: general counsel scope at infrastructure pace, in the most interesting corner of financial regulation right now. Stablecoin-native payments across emerging markets means regulated payments law, digital-asset regulation, and frontier-market licensing in one seat, at a company where legal is expected to open corridors, not slow them down. The role carries the MLRO appointment, so eligibility to hold it is a requirement.

What you'll own

• Licensing strategy end to end. Applications, regulator correspondence, and ongoing obligations across Canada (MSB, RPAA), the US (FinCEN, state MTL strategy), the EU (CASP, PSD2), the UK, and a growing set of African regimes. You decide the sequencing: where we apply, where we acquire, and where we rely on partners.
• The compliance programme. KYB onboarding, sanctions and PEP screening, transaction monitoring, on-chain analytics, and the governance behind it all. You design controls that satisfy multiple regulators without multiplying headcount.
• Commercial legal. Partner, client, and infrastructure agreements: the negotiation posture, the template machinery, and the judgement calls on which risks to fight and which to carve out and move past.
• Regulator, bank, and counsel relationships. You’re in the room with regulators and bank compliance teams, and you scope and drive external counsel rather than being driven by them.
• The team. Hire and lead the function, starting with the Legal & Regulatory Analyst, and build the systems that let a small team cover a global perimeter.

Who you are

• You’ve done this at a serious level. 4+ years PQE across financial regulation, payments, or fintech, including time in-house at a regulated payments, e-money, or digital-asset business. You’ve run licensing processes and faced regulators directly.
• You are fluent in the stablecoin regulatory landscape, or close enough to get there fast: MiCA, the GENIUS Act era in the US, and the patchwork of VASP regimes emerging across our markets.
• You’re commercially minded. You measure legal by corridors opened and deals closed safely, not memos produced. You know which risks need fighting and which need a carve-out.
• You build systems. Templates, automated workflows, AI-assisted execution. You design the machine and apply your judgement where it matters, rather than doing everything manually and calling it rigour.
• You produce clean, fast output. Regulator responses, board papers, and negotiation positions that are clear, correct, and delivered when the business needs them.
• You’re MLRO-eligible. This role carries the MLRO appointment and the personal regulatory accountability that comes with it. You’ve held the function before, or you’re demonstrably ready to hold it and would clear the fit-and-proper bar.