Role Overview
The client is seeking a Legal Counsel (Maternity Cover) to join their APAC Legal team, supporting business operations across South East Asia and Japan. This role provides pragmatic, solutions-oriented legal advice across a broad range of commercial, corporate, regulatory, and operational matters, with a strong emphasis on payments, technology, and complex commercial arrangements.
You will work closely with senior business stakeholders and the APAC General Counsel, acting as a trusted advisor to enable commercially sound and compliant outcomes.
This is a 6-month fixed-term, based in Malaysia, reporting to the General Counsel APAC & China.
Key Responsibilities
- Advise senior management and business teams on commercial, corporate, regulatory, employment, and compliance matters across South East Asia and Japan.
- Draft, review, and negotiate a wide range of agreements, including customer, partner/distributor, procurement, hardware, software, professional services contracts, and NDAs.
- Manage the end-to-end contract lifecycle, including issue identification, risk assessment, mitigation strategies, and alignment with internal governance frameworks (e.g. GCP, DOA).
- Support commercial negotiations, advising on key risk areas such as liability, indemnities, intellectual property, regulatory compliance, certifications, and product lifecycle considerations.
- Assess legal and operational risks for high-value or strategic transactions, ensuring compliance with internal policies and approval requirements.
- Support incident management, advising on contractual rights, obligations, potential exposure, and mitigation strategies.
- Partner closely with Sales, R&D, Finance, Risk, Compliance, and Operations teams to facilitate timely and commercially balanced decisions.
- Participate in regular business reviews to proactively identify legal risks and support evolving commercial priorities.
- Drive adoption and effective use of legal templates and contracting workflows via the Tomorro platform to improve efficiency and consistency.
- Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives within the Legal function, including process optimisation, SOP enhancements, and digitisation efforts.
Requirements
- Qualified lawyer with 58+ years post-qualification experience, ideally gained in-house or within a strong commercial practice.
- Demonstrated experience supporting multi-jurisdictional and/or APAC-based businesses.
- Strong expertise in commercial contracting, including customer, partner/distributor, procurement, hardware, software, and professional services agreements.
- Experience in payments, fintech, technology, or regulated environments will be highly advantageous.
- Fluency in English (written and spoken); Japanese language capability is a plus.
- Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence across functions and seniority levels.
- Pragmatic, solutions-oriented mindset with sound risk-based judgment.
- Ability to work independently, manage competing priorities, and thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
