Description:
About the role:As Director, Product Counsel, you'll be Collective's product and regulatory lawyer, carrying the regulatory position across tax, payroll, and financial services. You'll partner closely with Product and Member Operations to embed legal and regulatory requirements into products and operations from the start, rather than reviewing them at launch.
You'll also build and own Collective's compliance program, including our regulatory obligations, policies, controls, monitoring, and risk governance. You'll chair the Risk Oversight Committee and manage relationships with specialist regulatory counsel.
This is a high-autonomy, high-visibility role for a builder who can set the standard, make sound judgment calls, and lead cross-functional teams toward practical solutions.
What You'll Do:
- Serve as the embedded regulatory partner to Product and Member Operations, advising on product design, development, and launch across tax, payroll, financial services, and other regulated activities.
- Establish and enforce clear regulatory launch standards, with the authority to hold releases that do not meet them.
- Build and own Collective's compliance program, including regulatory obligations, policies, controls, monitoring, and change management.
- Develop policies governing member advice, data use, and marketing, and partner with Member Operations to embed them into day-to-day operations.
- Own marketing and lifecycle compliance, including advertising claims, endorsements, CAN-SPAM, TCPA, and auto-renewal requirements.
- Establish the framework for using member data across products and marketing, including IRC 7216, and partner with Information Security on GLBA, CCPA, CPRA, and incident response.
- Own AI and automated-decisioning disclosures and ensure member-facing terms, disclosures, consent flows, and communications are clear and compliant.
- Chair the Risk Oversight Committee, own the risk register and annual regulatory review, and manage relationships with specialist regulatory counsel.
What you'll bring:
- JD and active bar admission, with 10+ years of legal experience and substantial in-house regulatory compliance experience.
- Experience owning legal and regulatory matters for a regulated consumer or SMB product, ideally in fintech, payments, insurance, tax, lending, or another licensed vertical.
- Strong knowledge of tax and privacy regulations, including Circular 230, IRC 7216, GLBA, CCPA, and CPRA, with experience navigating consumer data, vendor relationships, and automated decisioning.
- Demonstrated experience building a compliance program from the ground up, including regulatory obligations, policies, controls, monitoring, and governance.
- Experience partnering directly with Product teams and embedding legal and regulatory requirements into product development and launch, rather than reviewing finished products.
- Strong track record drafting clear, concise consumer-facing terms, disclosures, and communications, with the judgment to balance regulatory risk with business and member experience.
- Strong executive presence and judgment, with the ability to challenge commercial leaders, influence cross-functional stakeholders, and make practical decisions in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.
- Experience using AI-enabled workflows to scale the function.