Senior Legal Counsel, APAC

Job Title: Senior Legal Counsel
Department: Legal
Reports to: Head of Legal
Location: APAC

About Codex

Codex is building the infrastructure for stablecoin-based cross-border payments — moving money faster, cheaper, and more transparently than the legacy financial system. Backed by Circle, Coinbase, Dragonfly, Wintermute, and Cumberland, we're a small team solving hard problems at the intersection of crypto and global payments.

The Role
Codex's product offering and financial partnership network is expanding rapidly — new payment providers, banking partners, and liquidity providers globally. The legal work that underpins those relationships needs to move at the same pace as the business. This role exists to make that happen.

You'll own the legal workstream for financial partnerships end-to-end — reviewing and negotiating FP contracts, managing due diligence requests, and advising on the regulatory implications of new products, corridors, and partner structures. You'll work closely with the Head of Legal and report into the legal function, with tight day-to-day collaboration with the Financial Partnerships, Product and Compliance teams.

This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who has done this work before and can operate with a high degree of autonomy.

Responsibilities

Financial Partnership Contracts

• Review, negotiate, and execute commercial agreements with financial partners — payment providers, banking counterparties, liquidity providers, and PSPs

• Own the contract lifecycle end-to-end: preparing markups, tracking open issues, coordinating with counterparties, and driving to execution without losing momentum

• Maintain and update standard form FP agreements as the regulatory and commercial environment evolves

• Advise the Financial Partnerships and Sales teams on commercial terms, entity routing, and deal structuring across multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction arrangements

Financial Partner RFIs & Due Diligence

• Manage inbound legal and regulatory due diligence requests from financial partners — collating documentation, preparing regulatory status summaries, and coordinating with Compliance on AML/CFT-related queries

• Prepare and maintain legal memos, licensing summaries, and corporate documentation packages for partners requiring clarity on Codex's regulatory status and entity structure

• Ensure Codex's outbound KYB documentation to financial partners is accurate, current, and responsive

Product Regulatory Analysis

• Analyse the regulatory implications of new products, payment corridors, and client segments before they go live — identifying licensing requirements, restrictions, and structural considerations across relevant jurisdictions

• Advise Product and Engineering on the legal constraints that affect feature design, entity routing, and market entry sequencing

• Monitor regulatory developments across key jurisdictions (APAC, LATAM, EMEA) and brief the legal and business teams on material changes

What We're Looking For

• Qualified lawyer with 8 –10 years of experience, ideally combining a first-tier law firm foundation with in-house experience at a fintech payments company

• Deep expertise in financial partnership contracts and payments regulation — this is a domain specialist role, not a generalist one

• Comfortable operating autonomously: you can pick up a complex contract, identify the issues, and drive it to execution without needing significant direction

• Commercially aware — you understand that legal is an enabler of the business, not a gate, and you give advice accordingly

• Meticulous and detail-oriented, with the communication skills to translate complex legal positions into clear guidance for non-lawyers

• Based in APAC or a time zone that overlaps meaningfully with the team

Nice to Have

• Experience across multiple APAC and other regions and familiarity with the regulatory frameworks governing cross-border payments and digital assets in the region

• Exposure to stablecoin or digital asset regulation

• Prior experience as a solo or early legal hire at a fast-growing fintech