Senior Counsel, Vendor

Affirm

8d • $195,000 - $280,000 • Remote

About The Position

Affirm is seeking a practical, proactive, and people-oriented transactional attorney to lead and grow its Vendor Legal team. This role is responsible for managing a team, setting priorities, driving operational execution, and serving as a key stakeholder partner across the organization. The attorney will also maintain a personal deal portfolio, staying close to the work and modeling the standard of quality, speed, and judgment expected from the team. The ideal candidate is pragmatic, solutions-oriented, and comfortable balancing risk with business velocity in a high-growth, technology-driven environment. They should possess the ability to build and motivate a team, develop talent, and create scalable systems and processes for the legal function. This is an opportunity to rebuild the Vendor Legal team from the ground up.

Requirements

• JD and active membership in good standing with at least one U.S. state bar.
• 8+ years of relevant transactional experience in-house at a technology company or in a technology practice group at a top law firm.
• 2+ years of direct people management experience, including hiring, developing, and performance-managing attorneys or legal professionals.
• Exceptional drafting skills.
• Experience in fintech, payments, or financial services.
• Experience supporting global or multi-jurisdictional transactions (e.g., Canada, US, UK/EU, Australia).
• Strong working knowledge of data protection and privacy regimes such as CCPA, GDPR, APPs, PIPEDA, and GLBA.
• Proven ability to manage high deal volume while maintaining quality, consistency, and attention to detail.
• A track record of building or improving legal processes, playbooks, templates, or other operational tools in a high-growth environment.
• Clear, concise communication skills, with the ability to distill complex legal and commercial issues into plain language.
• Collaborative working style, with experience guiding cross-functional teams toward practical, win-win outcomes.
• Intellectual curiosity and creative problem-solving instincts: you learn new products and business models quickly and enjoy finding solutions to novel challenges.
• Proactive, self-starter mentality with a bias for action.
• Excellent judgment, and ability to make timely, pragmatic, and business-focused decisions in ambiguous situations with imperfect information.
• Humility, integrity and a sense of humor; you take your work seriously, but not yourself.

Responsibilities

• Foster a collaborative, high-performance team culture grounded in accountability, continuous improvement, and a bias for action.
• Lead negotiation, drafting, and execution of a wide range of vendor agreements, including technology services, cloud services, SaaS, data platform, contractor, marketing/creative, lease, and payment processing engagements.
• Manage a high volume of deals with speed and sound judgment.
• Design, implement, and continuously improve playbooks, contract templates, negotiation guides, and other projects that enable the team to operate efficiently at scale.
• Identify friction points and build solutions that reduce cycle time without sacrificing quality.
• Work closely with procurement, financial partnerships, engineering, product, finance, information security, privacy, and other teams to provide clear, practical guidance.
• Serve as a proactive, strategic business partner to senior managers across the organization.
• Develop and deliver training and resources that empower business partners to self-serve on routine vendor legal matters, increasing team capacity and reducing bottlenecks.

Benefits

• Health care coverage - Affirm covers all premiums for all levels of coverage for you and your dependents
• Flexible Spending Wallets - generous stipends for spending on Technology, Food, various Lifestyle needs, and family forming expenses
• Time off - competitive vacation and holiday schedules allowing you to take time off to rest and recharge
• ESPP - An employee stock purchase plan enabling you to buy shares of Affirm at a discount

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree