Vice President, Legal - Commercial

Wingstop•Dallas, TX

About The Position

The Vice President, Legal - Commercial leads Wingstop’s enterprise commercial legal function and serves as a strategic advisor to leaders across the business. Reporting to the Chief Legal Officer, this leader enables growth by helping teams structure sound business solutions, move with appropriate speed, and manage legal and reputational risk across a technology-forward, highly franchised global restaurant brand. The role owns the legal framework for commercial contracting and provides senior advice and oversight on employment, litigation, investigations, regulatory matters, and enterprise risk. This is a hands-on, player-coach role. The Vice President personally handles priority matters while building and leading a responsive, scalable legal operating model in partnership with Legal Operations and other Legal leaders. The role leads commercial legal strategy, including enterprise intellectual property and brand legal strategy, and serves as primary legal partner to business and corporate functions. It also leads complex commercial agreements, advises on escalated employment and regulatory issues, oversees litigation and investigations, strengthens enterprise risk management and crisis response, develops assigned legal professionals, and manages outside counsel and providers.

Requirements

Juris Doctor degree from an accredited law school.
Active membership in good standing with at least one U.S. state bar.
12+ years of progressive legal experience, including substantial in-house or embedded business-partner experience.
Deep experience drafting and negotiating a broad range of sophisticated commercial agreements, with the ability to identify materially important business issues and resolve them efficiently.
Demonstrated experience advising on employment and labor matters and overseeing litigation, investigations, regulatory inquiries, and outside counsel.
Strong understanding of legal and regulatory issues relevant to a modern consumer business, including advertising, consumer protection, privacy, cybersecurity, digital commerce, data, and artificial intelligence.
Commercial and financial acumen, including the ability to understand operating priorities, evaluate tradeoffs, contextualize risk, and recommend practical paths forward.
Proven ability to influence executives and cross-functional leaders, navigate ambiguity, and remain composed and decisive in sensitive, high-stakes, or fast-moving situations.
Experience building scalable legal processes and using templates, playbooks, metrics, workflow technology, automation, and responsible AI to improve service, consistency, and speed.
Demonstrated ability to operate as a hands-on, player-coach leader, develop talent, and manage outside counsel, vendors, budgets, and service expectations with discipline.
Excellent judgment, communication, and executive presence, including the ability to translate complex legal concepts into concise, actionable business guidance.

Nice To Haves

Experience with a restaurant, QSR, hospitality, retail, consumer, technology, or other multi-unit and highly franchised business is strongly preferred.
Familiarity with franchisor, joint-employer, and multi-state workforce considerations is preferred.

Responsibilities

Set and lead commercial legal strategy, including enterprise intellectual property and brand legal strategy.
Serve as the primary legal partner to Supply Chain, Technology, Digital, Data and AI, Marketing, People, Finance, Operations, Development, and other corporate functions, providing practical counsel aligned with growth and enterprise priorities.
Lead drafting, negotiation, and governance of complex supplier and distribution, technology and SaaS, data and AI, digital and delivery, marketing and media, professional services, licensing, real estate, development, and other strategic agreements.
Build a disciplined, risk-tiered contracting model with clear decision rights and escalation paths.
Partner with Legal Operations on templates, playbooks, self-service tools, contract lifecycle capabilities, workflow automation, and responsible AI-enabled legal delivery.
Advise the People team and business leaders on escalated employment matters affecting GSC and company-owned operations, including performance, accommodations and leave, wage and hour, workplace conduct, reorganizations, separations, and franchisor or joint-employer risk.
Own enterprise litigation, arbitration, administrative claims, subpoenas, and government inquiries, including early assessment, preservation, discovery, settlement, insurance coordination, and outside counsel.
Partner with the VP, Franchise & International Legal on franchise-related disputes.
Lead sensitive internal investigations involving misconduct, employment, or compliance concerns, ensuring appropriate independence, documentation, escalation, and remediation in partnership with People, Internal Audit, Information Security, and executive leadership.
Advise on commercial and operational regulation, including consumer protection, advertising, food safety and product issues, privacy and cybersecurity, accessibility, competition, and emerging requirements affecting digital platforms and artificial intelligence.
Coordinate with appropriate Legal and Compliance leaders on enterprise-wide sanctions, anti-bribery, and related compliance-program matters.
Strengthen enterprise risk management and crisis response by identifying emerging legal and reputational risks, establishing practical mitigation and escalation plans, and providing concise recommendations to the Chief Legal Officer and senior leaders.
Lead and develop assigned legal professionals, including employment and litigation/risk resources as the organization evolves.
Manage external counsel and providers to deliver timely, commercially grounded, high-quality, and cost-effective support across the enterprise.

Benefits

Unlimited paid time off for exempt employees
One paid volunteer day of your choice
Competitive bonus structure for eligible roles
Team member stock purchase plan
Health savings or flexible spending account options
401(k) with employer contributions: dollar for dollar on the first 3% and 50 cents on the dollar for the next 2% of team member contributions, up to 5% of eligible compensation
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits
Basic life and AD&D insurance provided
Pet insurance
Education assistance
Wellness reimbursement program
Paid maternity and paternity leave
Lunch provided every Tuesday and Thursday in office
Discount on Wingstop gift cards
Onsite game room