Legal Counsel

The Role

Wayve is looking for a talented Legal Counsel, with demonstrable post-qualified experience, to join our team. This is a fantastic opportunity for a junior lawyer who wants to broaden their skills and gain hands-on exposure across a wide range of legal areas in a global deep tech environment. As Legal Counsel, you will act as a trusted advisor to the business on a broad range of matters. While you will cover a broad generalist remit, your primary focus will be on corporate matters, M&A, employee equity schemes and employment matters. You will also provide day-to-day support on commercial contracts and general legal queries across the organisation. The role will also provide ample opportunity to skill up in a number of other areas including AI, intellectual property, data protection, regulatory compliance and product advisory work.

Key responsibilities:

This broad role will be supporting the Head of Legal and our Senior Legal Counsel with a wide range of legal matters, including:

• Support on corporate governance and company secretarial matters not just in the UK but also across our global group of companies.
• Assist with M&A activity, including due diligence, drafting, and post-closing integration.
• Support on HR and other employment-related matters, including advising on employee relations issues, performance management, workplace investigations and supporting international teams with local counsel.
• Manage employee equity schemes including drafting and issuing grants, board minutes and resolutions, maintaining records and statutory filings, liaising with leadership and our People and Finance teams.
• Review and negotiate commercial contracts across suppliers, customers, and partners.
• Provide general legal support across the business, escalating complex issues appropriately.
• Draft policies and procedures and educate the business on compliance and best practices.

About you

In order to set you up for success as a Legal Counsel at Wayve, we’re looking for the following skills and experience.

• Qualified solicitor in E&W or another major common law jurisdiction, ideally trained at a top law firm or in-house.
• Solid grounding in corporate and commercial law.
• Exposure to M&A transactions, ideally on both the buy and the sell side, with experience in drafting and reviewing deal documentation, due diligence and integration planning.
• Exposure to employee equity/compensation structures, ideally with an international aspect is strongly preferred.
• Exposure to HR and employment matters advising on day-to-day employee relations is preferred.
• Strong technical, drafting, legal research, and negotiation skills.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills and an ability to explain complex legal matters in clear, accessible language to non-lawyers.
• Strong commercial acumen and judgement to effectively evaluate legal risk in the context of the company’s wider strategy.
• Ability to work autonomously, take initiative and be proactive in addressing new challenges.
• Well-developed prioritisation skills and ability to deal with multiple projects and internal clients.
• Ability to collaborate with colleagues across teams and jurisdictions.

This is a full-time role based in our office in Central London. At Wayve we want the best of all worlds so we operate a hybrid working policy that combines time together in our offices and workshops to fuel innovation, culture, relationships and learning, and time spent working from home.