Senior Counsel – Product (Asia-Pacific)

Building the Future of Open Finance

Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

The team

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.

Join our Regulatory Legal team, the group responsible for maintaining and growing Kraken's product offerings across every region we operate in and for advising the business on its day-to-day regulatory obligations. We are a tight, experienced group of lawyers from tradfi (traditional finance), fintech and crypto backgrounds who move fast, stay curious and take pride in the commercial accountability of our advice. We partner directly with Compliance, Product and senior leadership to keep our licensed entities running smoothly and our regulators well served.

This is a remote role based in Hong Kong or Singapore, supporting our growing volume of regulatory work across the broader APAC region. You will operate as a practical legal generalist with a focus on Product legal advice: supporting launches and product changes across APAC, including derivatives and over-the-counter ("OTC") options, tokenised equities, earn and staking products, custody, and card and payments offerings.

The opportunity

• Provide product legal support for APAC launches and enablement across the entire Payward product suite, including xStocks, OTC options, institutional custody and execution, and cross-regional products rolling out across APAC

• Act as a gatekeeper for new APAC outside counsel engagements: scope the work, estimate the cost, and sign off before matters are routed externally, so that outside counsel is used where local-law advice is genuinely required

• Translate complex regulatory frameworks into pragmatic, actionable guidance for the business, favouring plain-English communication, measurable risk trade-offs and decision-ready recommendations

• Use AI-assisted tools (for example for multi-jurisdiction licensing analysis, first drafts of regulatory submissions and matter tracking) to raise the speed and consistency of the team's work

• Own the APAC regulatory workload under the direction of the APAC regulatory lead, including licence variations, client and broker agreement documentation, licensing structure questions and routine regulator correspondence

• Take ownership of geography-specific licensing in markets such as Kazakhstan, Pakistan and the Philippines, instructing and supervising local counsel in region and in time zone, and supporting other APAC markets (for example South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia) as they arise

• Support Payward Group licensing initiatives in key APAC markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong, including preparing application materials and coordinating with outside counsel

What you bring

• Qualified lawyer admitted in Singapore, Hong Kong, England and Wales, or an equivalent common law jurisdiction

• 10 or more years' post-qualification experience ("PQE") in financial services regulatory law, gained at a regulated financial services institution (for example a bank, broker-dealer, exchange, derivatives dealer or crypto services provider), at a law firm supporting such clients and/or at a relevant regulator

• Demonstrated ability to independently own regulatory relationships and business-as-usual regulatory workstreams, including notifications, information requests and supervisory correspondence

• Strong experience with the financial regulatory landscape in a major Asian financial centre (eg, Singapore and the MAS, Hong Kong and the SFC/HKMA)

• Proven ability to instruct, supervise and manage the cost of local counsel across multiple jurisdictions, including in markets where you are not admitted

• Working knowledge of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing ("AML/CTF") obligations and regulatory expectations

• Outstanding analytical, drafting and organisational skills, with crisp, plain-English writing

• Ability to distill complex legal and regulatory issues into clear, actionable guidance for non-lawyer stakeholders

• A pragmatic, commercially accountable approach to legal and regulatory risk that gives stakeholders a useful range of options and a clear recommendation

• Comfort operating with a high degree of autonomy in a fast-moving, remote, multi-time-zone environment, owning a broad workload from day one

Nice to haves

• Experience advising on virtual asset regulation in one or more APAC jurisdictions

• Familiarity with the regulation of derivatives (including OTC options), equities and emerging tokenised financial instruments

• Experience supporting change-of-control notifications or other regulatory aspects of corporate transactions

• Experience with payments, e-money or card regulation

• Working proficiency in a second APAC language

• An authentic interest in crypto and digital assets, and familiarity with Payward's and competitors' products

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.

Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Our commitment

Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.

As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

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