Lead Legal Counsel

As Cloover's first legal and regulatory hire, you will define how legal and regulatory work is done at the company and build the team behind it. You will drive market expansion and own high-impact regulatory work that directly determines which European markets Cloover can enter, obtain regulatory licenses across new markets, and own the legal side of every contract signed. You'll report to the CEO/CFO and work closely with institutional lenders, banks and complex financing structures.

What you'll do

• Cover the legal work Cloover needs day to day: commercial contracts, corporate questions, employment matters, governance, disputes, policies, and risk decisions.
• Own the contract estate: installer and partner agreements, customer terms, funding, receivables and lender documentation.
• Draft and negotiate directly, alongside the finance and commercial teams.
• Lead Cloover's financial and regulatory legal work across Europe and other markets: licensing route selection, applications, regulatory analysis, and the workplan behind it.
• Build the compliance, policy and governance suite from the ground up.
• Track consumer credit and financial services regulation as it moves, including CCD II in Germany, and translate these changes into actionable business operations.
• Choose, instruct, and control outside counsel and advisors across markets.
• Hire and lead an analyst within 6 to 12 months, and build the legal and compliance function from there.

What you'll need

• 8-10+ years in a regulated financial services environment (consumer credit, lending, payments or fintech), including time in-house rather than advisory work only.
• You have drafted and negotiated commercial contracts as the principal: you owned the redline, the fallback positions and the final call, with no supervising partner behind you.
• You have built regulatory frameworks yourself, not only advised on them. This includes policies you wrote, applications you assembled, and positions you defended to a regulator, auditor, or lender.
• You are able and willing to hold a named regulatory officeholder role where a regulator requires one.
• You are comfortable being the only lawyer in the room, and you say no in writing when it matters.
• Excellent written and spoken English, our working language.
• Based in Berlin and energized by being in the room. We're intentionally office-first: decisions get made in real time, prototypes get stress-tested over lunch, and the founding team is ten meters away.

Nice to have

• Professional German (B2 or above), enough to work in German-language contracts and directly with German counsel and authorities.
• A legal qualification in an EU jurisdiction, England and Wales, or a comparable bar.

What they offer

• Strong base and a bonus tied to outcomes, recognised when it happens rather than locked behind annual cycles.
• Unlimited enterprise-grade AI, no caps, no approval process.
• Prenzlauer Berg office with the latest Apple hardware.
• Free breakfast and dinner, stocked kitchen, 25 days vacation, fully covered Deutschlandticket, Urban Sports Club (M).
• WHOOP Peak membership covered after six months.