Legal Counsel

Legal Counsel (m/f/d)

Remote Europe

Hello 👋  I’m Robert, Finance & Legal Lead at Kayzen and I’m now looking for a Legal Counsel to join our team. As we scale our business globally — managing an increasingly complex client and vendor landscape, navigating cross-border data privacy requirements, and growing our equity and corporate structure — we need a sharp, pragmatic, and commercially minded legal mind to own our legal function. You will take what we have built so far and professionalise, scale, and strengthen it. Working closely with our Finance & Legal Lead, you will be a true business partner to senior leadership across the company.

About Kayzen

Kayzen is an App demand-side platform (DSP) dedicated to democratizing app advertising on Mobile and Connected TV devices. We enable leading apps, agencies, media buyers, and brands to run programmatic customer acquisition, retargeting, and brand performance campaigns through our self-serve and managed service options. Built on the three core pillars of performance, transparency, and control, Kayzen powers the world’s best performance marketing teams with bespoke solutions that fuel business growth and deliver a competitive advantage. With an unprecedented scale of 300B+ daily ad requests from 1.6B+ unique users worldwide, we serve up to 1B+ ads per day in 180 countries. Kayzen is accessible through our APIs and user interface. 

The team

You will join a small, senior team and work directly alongside our Finance & Legal Lead. Your key stakeholders will be the leadership team, as well as our Finance, Operations, and Commercial functions across a globally distributed organisation.

The role

As Legal Counsel, you will be Kayzen’s primary legal owner across four core areas. You will operate as a trusted business partner — not just a gatekeeper — and are expected to move fast, apply sound commercial judgment, and help the business scale without unnecessary legal friction.

Responsibilities

GDPR & data privacy compliance

• Own and continuously develop Kayzen’s GDPR compliance programme as an AdTech company operating across multiple jurisdictions, with a particular focus on EU and US privacy frameworks
• Advise on data processing agreements, privacy notices, consent frameworks, and cross-border data transfers
• Act as primary point of contact for internal privacy questions

Transaction advice & contract negotiations

• Provide legal counsel on T&Cs and related transactions
• Lead or support contract negotiations with clients and vendors, including MSAs, SaaS agreements, partnership agreements, and NDAs
• Ensure commercial contracts are legally robust and aligned with company risk appetite

Cap table & corporate law

• Manage and maintain Kayzen’s cap table
• Oversee corporate governance across Kayzen’s group structure, including subsidiary management, shareholder resolutions, and notarial filings under German law
• Support fundraising and investor relations from a legal and corporate perspective

General compliance

• Further develop and scale Kayzen’s compliance framework to match our growth as an internationally operating company
• Monitor relevant regulatory developments (ad-tech, data privacy, employment, corporate) and translate them into actionable guidance for the business

Requirements

• Qualified lawyer (“Volljurist”) or Business lawyer (“Wirtschaftsjurist”) with 2–5 years of relevant professional experience
• Strong understanding of German business law is essential; additionally solid understanding of international and US legal frameworks, particularly in the context of data privacy and commercial contracts
• Strong knowledge of GDPR and European data protection law; familiarity with US privacy regulations (CCPA etc.) a strong plus
• Experience in a start-up or scale-up environment is strongly preferred — you know how to work lean, move fast, and prioritise pragmatically
• Hands-on experience with contract drafting and commercial negotiations across a variety of agreement types
• Familiarity with cap table management and corporate governance in a VC-backed or founder-led company context
• Commercially minded: you understand that good legal advice enables business, not just protects it
• Fluent in English & German 
• Demonstrated ability to leverage AI tools to enhance legal productivity — you move fast and work smart

What we offer

• A high-impact legal role with real ownership and room to grow the function
• Direct collaboration with the Finance & Legal Lead and senior leadership
• Competitive fixed compensation commensurate with experience
• Fully remote work arrangement
• €500 home-office setup budget
• €1,000 annual learning & development budget
• A motivated, diverse, and internationally distributed team