German Legal Counsel

**Legal Counsel, DE**

**About iwoca**

We believe we make a real difference to business owners, their teams, families and communities: they use our finance as superpower either to seize opportunities for growth or move their business out from under the shadow of cashflow. It’s our mission to finance a million businesses and we won’t accept a world where they have to jump through unnecessary hoops and wait weeks, even months, for a decision. With iwoca businesses get the right finance with a few clicks, when and where they need it.

Since our launch in 2012, we have stayed true to our goals, and are now one of the biggest fintechs in Europe. Along the way, we have revolutionised lending with our cutting-edge tech platform, earned numerous industry awards, and made over billions available to more than 100,000 businesses.

We are the leading and fastest growing Alternative Lender in the German market. A market that is still developing and we are there to shape it. Iwoca has established strong cooperations with the leading banks, financial advisors and platforms in Germany, like Commerzbank and eBay.

However, we’re still near the start of our journey - our aim is to finance a million small businesses within a decade and so we need more smart, hands-on people to help us reach this goal.

We are recruiting a German qualified lawyer to work with our German business and report to iwoca’s Head of Legal.

**Day to day you will**:

- Support and advise teams across the German business, including lending propositions (product development), customer acquisition, customer success, marketing and people ops (HR).
- Draft, review and negotiate partnership, customer and supplier contracts by providing pragmatic and commercial support
- identify and implement process improvements to make legal work more efficient, including building out and maintaining templates, playbooks and decision frameworks for our partnership and customer acquisition agreements
- Give advice to the business on a range of regulations, including GDPR and German lending permissions, and ensure our product complies with all elements of German law.
- Instruct and manage external legal counsel, and manage legal budget with the guidance of the Head of Legal and GM of Germany
- Support corporate housekeeping, management of constitutional documents and statutory books, and ongoing filing requirements across our German entities.

**There will be opportunities for you to**:

- Advise and educate other members of the legal team on areas of your competence through formal and informal training
- Get involved more broadly with the Legal function, including in the UK and Luxembourg and any other jurisdiction in which we may operate
- Develop with the German business into a senior counsel with managerial responsibilities

**We are looking for**:

- You are a qualified lawyer in Germany with a minimum of 2 years post-qualification experience
- You are fluent in German and English
- You have experience in commercial contracts, partnership and broker agreements
- You are **smart**, meaning you:

- use thoughtful legal analysis to quickly cut through legal and commercial complexity
- give concrete feedback in a way that facilitates decision-making
- You are **motivated**, meaning you:

- go above and beyond to deliver high quality legal work in line with deadlines
- curious about all parts of the business and the challenges they face
- are interested in growing with our dynamic German business and, in the future, other countries in which we may operate
- You are **humble**:

- no ego, we’re in it together
- you proactively reflect on individual and team performance on a task
- It would be also nice (but not required) if you:

- have a basic knowledge of GDPR and a desire to develop in this area
- have some experience with employment law issues
- appreciate the importance of quantifying legal risk to inform decision-making

We all enjoy:

- A smart, motivated and international team (we represent over 35 different nationalities) with ridiculous growth-mindset
- iwoca takes over a ski chalet in winter so that you and your team can ski or snowboard (and work) for a week. During summer we are drawn to the sun.
- Access to the gym membership program
- Exclusive participation in the daily commute
- Company-wide training courses with internal and external speakers
- 26 days of vacation a year plus a free day for your birthday
- One-month fully paid sabbatical after 4 years
- Share options
- A paid volunteer day that gives you the opportunity to invest time to support a charity of your choice.
- ’iwocans’ also benefit from fully stocked fridges in our offices with whatever is needed to strengthen them. There are snacks (both healthy and less healthy) for the whole day.