Associate General Counsel, Employment

Company Description

Shopify is now permanently remote and working towards a future that is digital by default. Learn more about what this can mean for you.

Shopify has redefined commerce, raising the standard for how companies of all sizes sell their products and services online and off. With 1,000,000+ merchants in more than 175 different countries, and the most innovative platform on the market, we continue to grow rapidly while constantly looking for new ways to impact and disrupt markets.

**Job Description**:
We focus on legal issues that affect Shopify as a global employer. Our core goal is to ensure that Shopify remains a trusted employer that can strike a balance between compliance with legal requirements and maintaining our amazing, mission-driven work environment.

From hiring, to employee relations, to exits - this work is varied and constantly evolving. Real talk: being a member of a fast-moving team that’s doing cutting edge legal work is not always easy. We find fulfillment practicing at the top of our games with our amazing team and coming up with creative solutions to complex problems

**About You**

We’re looking for a curious, passionate and dedicated employment lawyer with extensive post-qualification experience in continental Europe. You will have experience dealing with litigation, employment standards, occupational health and safety, and human rights matters, ideally in several jurisdictions. You must be able to juggle competing priorities, directly manage high pressure situations, be equally adept at playing a lead role on some projects and a supporting role on others, and be an effective and confident communicator who can provide user-friendly legal advice. You will also need to leverage a combination of your existing knowledge, great instincts, and strong research skills to extrapolate into new areas of law, new geographies, and areas of ambiguity. Most of all, you will need to become a trusted advisor who can help guide our business teams through areas of law that may be very new to them.

Success on the Shopify legal team requires intellect, humility and a sense of humour. You need to take the work seriously, but not take yourself too seriously. You also need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, able to work with many different types of personalities, and be ready to navigate uncharted waters and frequent change.

**Responsibilities**:

- Providing frontline advice to members of the Talent team relating to all things employment law and HR - everything from signature requirements in Germany to investigations in Ireland and terminations in France, and a whole lot more
- Reviewing and updating internal policies, practices and documents to ensure compliance with applicable laws as they evolve
- Drafting responses to demand letters, internal policies/communications, and key employment documents
- Working on cross-functional projects as the employment law expert
- Advising on workplace investigations and employee grievances
- Providing employment law support for M&A
- Taking a leading role on improving knowledge management and systems building within the Talent and Legal teams
- Providing employment support with entity set up in new international jurisdictions
- Supervising external counsel on employment litigation matters and leading negotiations with opposing counsel where appropriate.

**Qualifications**:

- A university degree in law
- Full qualification to practice law in your jurisdiction - note, you do not need to live in a major urban centre For Shopify, home is where the Internet is.
- Extensive experience advising in all aspects of employment law, having honed your skills as a practicing employment lawyer at a law firm and, ideally, in-house
- Strong writing skills, with the ability to match your tone to your audience and write plainly and concisely - no Latin or legal citations, ever
- Big-picture thinking: you will need the ability to think strategically about how a given issue may impact Shopify beyond specific matters
- Interest in building and managing a cross-jurisdictional team
- A desire to work on an agile & lean team. You will get asked to help with issues that have no clear answer, and may be in locations you are unfamiliar with, and you should feel comfortable working through these issues and learning on the job.
- You need to be a self-starter who thrives without regular oversight as you will be working remotely, and in a different time zone than your lead.
- Comfort navigating and making decisions in the midst of ambiguity and frequent change
- The knowledge and confidence to provide quick, pragmatic advice on a variety of employment law issues and develop actionable solutions to complex problems while mitigating risk.
- A strong desire to understand Shopify as a business and its workplace culture.
- Willingness to learn about employment law in new jurisdictions in EMEA and beyond (particularly APAC) and lean in to support

**Bonus Experience**: