Senior Legal Counsel - Capital Markets Risk & Disputes

Your career is an investment that grows over time!

Wealthsimple is on a mission to help everyone achieve financial freedom by reimagining what it means to manage your money. Using smart technology, we take financial services that are often confusing, opaque and expensive and make them transparent and low-cost for everyone. We’re the largest fintech company in Canada, with over 3 million users who trust us with more than $40 billion in assets.

Our teams ship often and make an impact with groundbreaking ideas. We're looking for talented people who keep it simple and value collaboration and humility as we continue to create inclusive and high-performing teams where people can be inspired to do their best work.

About the role 

The Senior Legal Counsel, Capital Markets Risk & Disputes will help improve our strong capital markets risk management program. At Wealthsimple, we believe that effective risk management is a massive driver of business value and growth, and we are looking for a sophisticated lawyer who shares that mindset. 

Reporting to the Chief Compliance Officer, this role will touch almost every corner of our large and rapidly scaling securities brokerage. This includes marketing risk assessments, disputes and investigations, cooperation with law enforcement, and proactive risk management in close collaboration with our product and client success teams. We are looking for someone who is an excellent business partner and strategic thinker, who is pragmatic and creative, and who seeks to leverage technology to enhance both the quality and efficiency of our risk function. As a key partner to R&D and Enabling Function teams across Wealthsimple, you will actively identify opportunities to improve our product and client experience while effectively managing our biggest risks.

Role responsibilities:

• Evaluate business decisions and provide advice to senior business leaders on potential legal risk issues, taking into account both legal and business perspectives.
• Lead the response to all disputes and third party investigations, with the exception of employment disputes. 
• Provide legal guidance to Wealthsimple’s marketing team, including drafting promotional terms and conditions, and providing risk assessments on creative products and marketing copy.
• Handle complex business and legal issues in a fast-paced, agile and evolving technology-driven business environment.
• Provide advice and support on emerging legal issues and risks, including securities intermediary risks, debtor / creditor risks and consumer protection risks.
• Proactively identify and resolve emerging business risks that Wealthsimple may face across its product offering. 
• Contribute actively to innovative ideas for quality and scalability within our rapidly growing brokerage.
• Implement AI and other innovative technology to increase the quality and effectiveness of our risk management program. 
• Conduct investigations.

Skills you bring:

• A law degree and minimum 5-8 years’ experience in disputes, gained at a major Canadian law firm, highly regarded litigation boutique, or an in-house corporate legal department.
• Experience with independently running and resolving complex commercial disputes. 
• Expertise in regulatory investigations and enforcement actions in the capital markets context.
• Familiarity with Canadian financial infrastructure and intermediaries, including regulated intermediaries, data providers, cloud infrastructure, and security providers.
• Rigorous analytical skills and ability to proactively issue spot and problem solve. 
• Ability to effectively apply risk-based frameworks to ambiguous problems.
• Skills to effectively communicate complex legal concepts to non-legal audiences.
• Project management and organizational skills that can be used to balance competing priorities.

Nice to haves:

• Fluency in French.
• Expertise in class actions.
• Working knowledge of and interest in generative AI.

Why Wealthsimple?

🤑 Competitive salary with top-tier health benefits and life insurance

📈 Retirement savings matching plan using Wealthsimple Work

🌴 20 vacation days per year and unlimited sick and mental health days

📚 Up to $1,500 per year towards wellness and professional development budgets respectively 

🛫 90 days away program: Employees can work internationally in eligible countries for up to 90 days per calendar year 

🌎 A wide variety of peer and company-led Employee Resource Groups (ie. Rainbow, Women of Wealthsimple, Black @ WS)

💖 Company-wide wellness days off scheduled throughout the year

We’re a remote-first team, with over 1,000 employees coast to coast in North America. Be a part of our Canadian success story and help shape the financial future of millions — join us!

Read our Culture Manual and learn more about how we work.

DEI Statement

At Wealthsimple, we are building products for a diverse world and we need a diverse team to do that successfully. We strongly encourage applications from everyone regardless of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status. 

Accessibility Statement

Wealthsimple provides an accessible candidate experience. If you need any accommodations or adjustments throughout the interview process and beyond, please let us know, and we will work with you to provide the necessary support and make reasonable accommodations to facilitate your participation. We are continuously working to improve our accessibility practices and welcome any feedback or suggestions on how we can better accommodate candidates with accessibility needs.