About

Swan is the leading European fintech specialized in embedded banking. A laureate of the French government’s selective year list of tech champions, “French Tech Next 120,” we are quickly expanding across Europe.

Over 100 European companies have already seamlessly integrated banking services such as accounts, cards, and payments into their products through our Banking-as-a-Service platform. This approach, known as “embedded finance”, empowers businesses to elevate their offerings and create new revenue streams — often times tripling their revenue!

Our founders’ vision from the beginning was Simplicity: that anyone with a fintech idea at 2 am can visit our website, start building, and buy themselves a coffee with a self-issued card the very next day. That vision has taken us far.

Following a 38M€ Series B round last September, we have been doubling our headcount and already have over 270 Swanees across offices in Paris, Bordeaux, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Milan! If you’re excited about joining a European fintech adventure, Swan is the way!

To learn more about us: About Swan ; Our story.

Job description

✨ Your mission

Swan is seeking a hands-on VP Legal to build our corporate legal function and team from the ground up. Reporting directly to the Deputy CEO, the VP Legal is responsible for the corporate legal function at Swan, including corporate governance, contracts, intellectual property, GDPR, and strategic initiatives like fundraising and M&A. As a trusted advisor to the leadership team, the role ensure the company operates within legal and ethical frameworks while driving business growth.

The role of VP Legal offers a unique opportunity to shape and scale the legal function in a high-growth Fintech company. If you're ready to make a significant impact, we’d love to hear from you!

✨ Main tasks

As a VP Legal, your role is develop and structure a wide range of legal services for the company, including but not restricted to:

• Corporate legal: Oversee annual shareholder meetings and board meetings, manage the equity/stock-option plans, coordinate fundraising legal aspects, and maintain corporate records and documentation.
• Legal structures: Oversee corporate structure, subsidiaries, and international entity management.
• Strategic projects : Support fundraising efforts, including due diligence and investor negotiations. Lead legal workstreams for M&A, partnerships, and other strategic transactions.
• Act as a liaison with the Regulatory Compliance team, who ensures compliance with financial regulations, licensing, and internal policies governing financial and consumer protection laws.
• Drafting and negotiating contracts: prepare the documentation with financial institutions, service providers, and partners
• Intellectual Property (IP): Protecting the company’s IP, including trademarks, patents, and copyrights.
• Litigation Management: Managing external legal disputes (e.g., lawsuits, claims) and partner with the Chief People Officer on internal ones.
• General Legal Advice: Offering broad legal guidance on a variety of business issues, helping the company navigate potential legal risks in its operations.
• Act as the company’s DPO, ensuring compliance with industry-specific regulations, particularly GDPR and cybersecurity compliance.
• Advise on complex issues related to labor laws and employee disputes, working as a partner to the Chief People Officer.
• Build and scale an in-house legal team (1 Legal counsel to be recruited) while effectively managing external counsel.
• Create and deliver training programs to educate employees on legal and compliance topics.

Preferred experience

✨ You’re a great match:

• 8-12+ years of legal experience, ideally a mix of law firm and in-house roles within tech or scale-up environments.
  
• Strong expertise in corporate law, commercial contracts
• Experience in a European and cross-border legal context is a plus.
• Proven leadership and team management skills
• Demonstrated ability to build legal structures, processes, and frameworks from scratch
  
• Hands-on, adaptable, and proactive, with a bias for action.
• Strategic thinker with excellent business acumen.
• Knowledge of Regulatory Compliance as a plus
• Our ideal teammate: Empathetic. Skilled. Frank. We love to challenge each other, and we leave our egos at the door.

It’s okay if you don’t tick all the boxes — don’t let imposter syndrome prevent you from applying! 🙌 

Swan is committed to providing a caring work environment for all employees, regardless of age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion, or belief.

When it comes to recruitment, we’re interested in your work experience, skills, and overall personality. Because diversity makes the workplace stronger and is necessary for Swan’s success, we are intensifying efforts to incorporate concrete actions to help us improve in this area.

About Swan

•  Meal Vouchers: We provide a Swile card to cover your meals on work days. 🥗
• Transport: Monthly mobility package for employees. In accordance with the company agreement for sustainable mobilities, you can now use your mobility package to pay for alternative commuting modes. 🚇
• Health insurance (mutuelle): Alan. This is Swan's health and welfare insurance. 🚑
• Sports: Thanks to our partnership with Classpass and Gymlib, you can enjoy advantageous discounts on subscriptions. They offer a wide range of sports activities as well as wellness activities. The offers are valid in several European cities, as well as online. 🏋
• Hybrid remote policy: We offer the possibility of working from home for 2 days per week. 🏡
• Offsite: Once a year we gather to reconnect, deep-dive into big topics, and relax. 🤝
• This isn’t a perk, it should be the rule, but diversity and inclusion are important at Swan. We’re working hard to get better every day.

✨ Our values:

Swan’s core values guide our actions daily. Individually, they may seem obvious, but together, they form a unique culture.

Simplicity: Leonardo Da Vinci said: “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” If something's convoluted or confusing, we work extra hard to break it down. - Making complex things simple is what we do.

Long Term: We always play the long game, whether it's to support our partners in their growth journey, or make tangible commitments to climate action.

Excellence: We are a team of experts who consistently go all out to create pixel-perfect banking services and exceed our partners' expectations— whatever it takes.

Be Human: We believe in the power of kindness and the importance of acting with integrity. But embracing our humanity extends beyond interpersonal interactions, it means caring about greater issues that affect our planet.

You can find out more about our culture.

Recruitment process

• A 30-min video call with our Talent Acquisition Manager, to get to know you, understand your career expectations and answer your questions
• a 1h15-1h30 interview with Camille, our Deputy CEO and the N+1 for the role, to have an overview of the role, explore your relevant experience together, and discuss on the position, team, chalenges, and objectives of the role
• a Legal case with an external interviewer to prepare in order to assess you legal expertise on corporate matters ; Structuring & building
• Interview with Stéphie, our Chief Risk Officier to discuss cross-functional collaboration and the understanding of our regulated framework
• Interview with Anne, our Chief People Officer to manage your leadership and management skills, and discuss collaboration on labor law matters
• And finally an interview with Nicolas, our Founder