Deputy General Counsel

Open Standard • San Francisco, NY

23h

About The Position

Open Standard is building internet-native money and developing Open USD (OUSD), a stablecoin available on Base, Ethereum, Solana, and Tempo. The company’s founding partners include Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe, and Visa, and more than 200 banks, payment networks, fintechs, and crypto companies have signed up to use OUSD. Open Standard has a team of about ten.

The Deputy General Counsel will help build Open Standard’s legal function alongside the General Counsel, a founding team member. The role partners with the GC, divides responsibilities according to comparative strengths, and owns assigned areas end to end. Open Standard is AI-centric and plans to keep its legal team small, with the Deputy General Counsel doing hands-on legal work supported by AI agents and a focused group of outside counsel.

Legal is closely integrated with the business, including OUSD product design, partner deals, and launch decisions. The role combines regulatory and product counseling, commercial deal structuring, partner diligence, governance, policy support, and the development of AI-enabled legal workflows.

Requirements

• At least 10 years of legal experience, including substantial in-house experience at crypto companies.
• Deep knowledge of the stablecoin market across commercial, regulatory, and product dimensions, including issuer economics, reserves and redemption, the effects of the GENIUS Act, and market developments.
• Experience working with or inside large financial institutions and an understanding of how banks, card networks, and asset managers make decisions.
• Creative commercial instincts and the ability to use them to shape deals and products.
• Experience as a regulatory and product lawyer who structures deals, rather than solely a contracts specialist.
• A scrappy, hands-on approach, including drafting documents and board memoranda.
• Serious use of AI in legal practice, with experience building agents or workflows to expand legal capacity.
• Clear and precise writing skills.
• Admission to practice in a US jurisdiction.

Nice To Haves

• In-house experience at a stablecoin issuer.
• Experience in a bank’s digital assets group, alongside crypto-native experience.
• Experience with stablecoin or payments licensing, including trust charters, state money transmission, or non-US regimes such as MiCA.
• Experience helping build the legal function at an early-stage company.
• Relationships with regulators, policymakers, or industry groups in payments and digital assets.

Responsibilities

• Advise product and engineering teams on OUSD design, including minting and redemption flows, partner rewards, wallet and chain integrations, and use cases such as cross-border payments and agentic commerce.
• Structure and negotiate agreements for network partners, reserve and custody relationships, exchanges and liquidity arrangements, and chains and protocols.
• Respond to diligence, risk, and regulatory questions from large banks, card networks, and asset managers.
• Develop creative deal terms, product changes, or regulatory approaches that enable partners to launch.
• Help steward Open Standard’s governance model, in which the company is owned and governed by partners who use its product.
• Support the Head of Policy with regulator and policymaker engagement, comment letters, and industry work.
• Assist with OUSD regulatory strategy under the GENIUS Act and state and international regimes, including licensing, issuer and reserve arrangements, and the treatment of rewards and distribution.
• Build an AI-native legal function using agents and workflows for contract review, diligence questionnaires, regulatory tracking, and partner questions.
• Manage outside counsel in the United States and abroad, using them selectively.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed