Lead Legal Counsel, Regulatory and Financial Services

Are you looking to have an impact on the daily life of millions of entrepreneurs in France (and tomorrow in Europe)?

Are you looking for a work environment that values trust, proactivity, and autonomy?

Then Pennylane is the right place for you !

Our vision

We aim to become the most beloved financial Operating System of French SMEs and Accounting Firms (and soon, European ones).

We help entrepreneurs rid themselves of time-consuming tasks related to accounting and finance while providing them with access to key financial information to assist in making the best decisions for their business.

About us

Pennylane is one of the fastest growing Fintechs in France (and soon to be in Europe!)

In 5 years of existence, we’ve managed to :

💻 Make ourselves known as a groundbreaking accounting and financial software for small businesses and their accountants

💰 Raise a total of €400 millions, including from Sequoia, the famous fund from the Silicon Valley who invested early in companies like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, Paypal and much more...

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Grow from 7 cofounders to 1000 happy Pennylaners : we’re now recognized as one of the greatest places to work in France (and also remotely), with a 4.6/5 rating on Glassdoor glassdoor.fr ↗.

🌍 Build an international environment with more than 25 nationalities, with a strong remote-friendly culture, where 30% of the employees are already working from all parts of Europe

🤝 Earn the trust of thousands of customers and accounting firms and obtain outstanding ratings google.com ↗

🚀 Already more than 900,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and over 6000 accounting firms use Pennylane in France!

We are currently operating approximately 30k business accounts under a BaaS model with Swan.

The role of Financial Services in our strategy is set to grow, both in terms of revenue and product contribution, to serve our 800k current customer base.

As such, we are initiating a process to get licensed as Etablissement de paiement et Société de financement. Our ambition is to start onboarding new customers by mid 2027 before starting migrating existing customers.

To meet this ambition, we are starting to hire our Tech, Product, Compliance, Legal and Ops leaders.

We are looking for a Lead Legal Counsel to drive the legal function of our Financial Services activity and build our regulatory legal team.

From the day you join until we are fully licensed, you will structure and execute the legal path to authorization: interpret requirements, translate them into an internal plan, and ensure deliverables are complete, consistent, and aligned across teams. You will help define the target operating model (intra-group and outsourced) and ensure it is legally defensible and well documented for the application.

After licensing, you will shift from “building the file” to running and scaling the legal function of the regulated entity: ensuring ongoing compliance with ACPR expectations, enabling product growth safely, and keeping the operating model (including outsourcing) continuously audit-ready. You will own the legal oversight of day-to-day legal and corporate matters (policies, governance, reporting support, inspections), lead the legal work for launching new regulated products and entering new partnerships, and manage the legal aspects of onboarding and migrating customers to the licensed subsidiary (terms, communications, complaints/conduct risk).

This is a greenfield project with high autonomy and responsibility, and the opportunity to shape the legal culture of a fast-growing fintech while managing and mentoring an experienced Legal Counsel, with the ambition to scale the team further as the business grows.

ORGANISATION & REPORTING

You will be part of the core Legal Department. Your reporting line will be Stanislas, our General Counsel.

You will manage a seasoned Legal Counsel and will be responsible for planning the future growth of the Financial Services Legal team. You will also partner closely with our Financial Services Chief Compliance and Risk Officer, Chief Operational Officer and the contract team.

MISSION & OBJECTIVES

Team Leadership & Structuring

• You manage, mentor, and develop your team member(s), fostering a high-performance, autonomous, and pragmatic legal culture.

• You structure the team’s workload and roadmap, delegating effectively while remaining deeply hands-on.

• You anticipate future hiring needs and actively participate in scaling the regulatory legal team.

Corporate and governance You design, document and run the legal aspects of corporate governance: delegation of powers, board/committee charters, conflicts management, inter-company arrangements on payment services outsourcing, governance narrative for the ACPR reports, and ongoing legal compliance cadence once authorized.

Products, contracts and customer legal architecture

• You own the legal design of the FS product perimeter (payments services, account services, credit/financing products as applicable).

• You work with the contractual team (Roland) on the associated contractual framework: customer terms, disclosures, pricing documentation, complaint handling language, and operational/legal flows (including KYC/AML handoffs, incident handling and customer communications).

Outsourcing / BaaS transition & vendor contracting You own legal matters relating to critical outsourcing and third-party reliance (including existing BaaS arrangements): contract negotiation, regulatory outsourcing clauses, audit/access rights, sub-outsourcing controls, exit plans, SLAs, data protection allocation, operational resilience expectations, and documentation suitable for ACPR scrutiny.

Migration readiness In close collaboration with the operation team (Maxime), you lead the legal plan for migrating customers from Swan (sequencing, consent/novation approaches, customer communications from a legal standpoint, continuity of mandates, handling of incidents/complaints, and safeguards to minimise conduct risk).

Privacy and Security In close coordination with our DPO (Léa) and security stakeholders, you ensure that our Financial Services operating model address data processing roles, cross-border flows (if any), retention, incident response, recordkeeping, and contractual protections with key providers.

Regulatory engagement support & internal enablement

• Until we are fully licenced, you help prepare ACPR interactions (Q&A packs, position papers, meeting preparation).

• Once authorized, you own the relationship with ACPR from a legal perspective, supporting the CCRO with legal opinions, advisory etc.

• You train internal stakeholders on the legal/regulatory constraints that shape product and operations, and build a “legal-by-design” approach for Financial Services.

Culture, Training & Advisory You will be expected to operate as an owner, not a “support function,” and to produce pragmatic, regulator-ready outcomes.

ABOUT YOU

• You have 8+ years of relevant experience, including in-house legal experience at a regulated entity (payments, EMI/PI, bank, lending/consumer credit, factoring, etc.), fintech, or BaaS.

• You have a proven track record or a strong aptitude for managing, mentoring, and developing team members in a fast-paced environment.

• You have substantial experience in regulated financial services legal work, and you are comfortable owning cross-functional programmes.

• Senior legal expert in a French ACPR-regulated entity (établissement de p