Counsel, Commercial

Your Role:

Reporting to the Vice President, the Commercial Counsel will have exceptional negotiating and drafting experience, product support, and fintech services industry experience. You will need to be able to combine business acumen and creativity to negotiate terms to help launch key business initiatives. You will play an immediate and direct role in complex commercial transactional work supporting our sales, technology, product, partnerships, and enterprise teams.

Things You Get To Do:

Commercial & Transactional Leadership:

• Draft, review, and negotiate complex financial and commercial agreements, including
  • Clearing agreements
  • Crypto and digital asset services agreements
  • Securities lending and margin documentation
  • B2B API, SaaS, and embedded brokerage partnerships
  • Derivatives and futures documentation
  • Vendor and event contracts

• Structure novel partnership arrangements that support Alpaca’s API-first brokerage model.
• Develop scalable contracting frameworks, templates, and playbooks to support global expansion.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Work closely with Sales, Compliance, Operations, Finance, InfoSec, and other stakeholders to ensure commercial arrangements align with regulatory and operational requirements.

Strategic Impact

• Challenge assumptions and help design creative legal structures that scale financial services infrastructure.
• Bring practical, business-oriented solutions to complex cross-border regulatory issues.
• Contribute to the evolution of Alpaca’s global legal strategy as we expand across North America, Europe, MENA, APAC, and LATAM.

Who You Are (Must-Haves):

• Licensed attorney with 5-8+ years of experience working at:
• A financial services institution (e.g., bank, broker-dealer, asset manager, FCM, payments firm, crypto exchange), or
• A law firm supporting such clients.
• Strong history of commercial and transactional legal work in financial services.
• Experience reviewing and negotiating complex financial agreements (clearing, prime brokerage, crypto, derivatives, or similar).
• Familiarity with U.S. regulatory regimes applicable to securities, crypto, and/or derivatives (SEC/FINRA, CFTC/NFA)
• Excellent judgment, analytical rigor, and clear communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to own projects from concept to execution.
• Practical, solution-oriented mindset with strong business judgment.
• Comfort working with cross-functional, globally distributed teams.
• Intellectual curiosity and interest in fintech, digital assets and blockchain technology.