Deputy General Counsel Global Head of Derivatives and Trading Legal
Payward, Inc. is the parent company and operating platform behind Kraken and a portfolio spanning trading, custody, payments, lending, tokenized assets, onchain finance, and benchmarks.
Maintainer signals as of 9/25/2026
Funding history
Investors
Projects
About Payward, Inc.
Payward operates unified financial infrastructure across crypto and traditional markets, including shared liquidity, risk and margin systems, collateral and settlement, compliance, and licensing. Its first-party portfolio includes Kraken, Kraken Pro, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services, CF Benchmarks, Reap, Krak, Kraken Prime, Kraken OTC, Kraken Custody, and Bitnomial.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will own the global legal structuring strategy for derivatives and trading products. You will guide product, venue, entity, and clearing architecture across licensed entities; lead and develop senior counsel; engage regulators; support supervised entities; and direct specialist external counsel when needed.
Requirements
- Be admitted to practice law in the US or qualified in England and Wales, Ireland, or an EU Member State
- Have 18+ years of post-qualification experience in financial-services regulatory law
- Have experience engaging regulators and managing supervisory correspondence
- Have substantial senior derivatives legal experience and ownership of structuring strategy
- Have expert command of one derivatives regulatory regime and strong fluency in another
- Have direct experience with virtual asset markets
- Have experience structuring offerings across licensed entities and jurisdictions
- Have experience building or scaling a legal function or team
Responsibilities
- Own global derivatives structuring strategy
- Solve cross-entity regulatory and product-architecture issues
- Serve as the senior legal owner for derivatives and trading products
- Lead, hire, and develop senior derivatives counsel
- Partner on regulatory engagement with relevant authorities
- Support supervised entities and new permissions
- Direct external counsel for specialist input
Benefits
- Bonus program
- Equity program
- Wellness allowance
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- 401(k)