Product Counsel (Director)

Role

We're looking for a Product Counsel leader to help build and lead Whatnot's product legal function. This is a player-coach role where you'll manage a small team while staying deeply hands-on across the legal questions that come with scaling a high-growth marketplace.

Strategic Leadership & Team Building

• Partner with the Deputy General Counsel and senior leadership to shape the long-term strategy, structure, and priorities of the product counsel function.
• Manage a high performing product counsel team.
• Co-develop playbooks, frameworks, and scalable processes that allow Whatnot’s product and engineering teams to move quickly while managing legal risk responsibly.
• Represent the legal function as a credible, trusted voice in executive-level and cross-functional discussions, including with Whatnot’s leadership team.

Product Counseling & Launch Support

• Serve as the primary legal point of contact embedded throughout the product development lifecycle, advising Product, Engineering, Design, and Trust & Safety teams from initial concept through feature release and post-launch iteration.
• Identify, assess, and drive resolution of legal issues related to privacy, data security, consumer protection, intellectual property, intermediary liability, advertising, and platform regulation.
• Review and advise on product features, user flows, terms of service, in-app disclosures, and marketing claims to ensure legal compliance and appropriate risk allocation.
• Advise on novel and rapidly evolving legal areas, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, recommendation systems, generative content, and live streaming regulation.

Regulatory Compliance & Risk Management

• Monitor, interpret, and communicate the impact of evolving global regulations – including GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, the EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, the EU AI Act, COPPA, FTC rules, and other applicable frameworks – to relevant business and legal stakeholders.
• Lead cross-functional responses to new or amended laws affecting product, partnering with privacy and policy colleagues to manage change effectively.
• Develop and maintain internal legal guidance, training, and educational resources to elevate legal fluency across product and engineering organizations.
• Manage outside counsel relationships and external legal resources efficiently and strategically, ensuring quality and cost-effectiveness.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Serve as a strategic business partner and trusted advisor – not just a legal gatekeeper – to senior leaders across product, engineering, operations, and marketing.
• Build strong relationships with stakeholders at all levels, enabling early legal integration into roadmap planning and strategic decision-making.
• Collaborate with Trust & Safety, Security, and Policy teams on platform integrity, content moderation, and abuse prevention initiatives with legal dimensions.