Senior Counsel, Technology & Privacy

Job Type: Full-time

About the role

The U.S. Soccer Federation exists in service to soccer, aiming to ignite a national passion for the game and bring soccer into every home and community across America. The Federation is in a period of significant growth with ambitious plans for the near and far future, seeking dynamic servant leaders who demonstrate visionary leadership, analytical decision-making, professional flexibility, and an empathic management style.

The Senior Counsel, Technology & Privacy is a new role responsible for developing, supporting, and advancing U.S. Soccer’s data governance program with a focus on privacy, data protection, and product counseling. Reporting to the Deputy General Counsel, Commercial & Business Affairs, you will provide practical, risk-based guidance, lead critical privacy and data initiatives, and build systems that enable U.S. Soccer to innovate responsibly while meeting evolving regulatory and ecosystem expectations. The ideal candidate brings deep privacy expertise, sound business judgment, and experience operating with autonomy in a fast-paced, high-growth environment, including counseling product, engineering, and technical teams and translating complex privacy requirements into practical guidance.

Responsibilities

Privacy & Data Protection Counseling

• Monitor and assess evolving privacy and data protection laws, regulatory guidance, and enforcement trends, and advise on impacts to the business
• Assess U.S. Soccer’s compliance posture under applicable privacy and data protection laws and lead the development and maintenance of scalable governance processes, documentation standards, monitoring approaches, and reporting practices
• Provide practical, business-focused guidance on the collection, use, sharing, retention, and protection of personal data and health data across U.S. Soccer’s products and operations
• Respond to data sharing and ecosystem questions, including governance and contractual expectations
• Support the company’s data governance uplift efforts, including roadmap development, milestone tracking, stakeholder alignment, and executive reporting
• Working cross-functionally with the IT and Product teams, advise on, develop, and deliver privacy training and awareness; identify training needs, define content expectations and target audiences, create/update course materials

Product & Technology Counseling

• Partner closely with the Product, IT, Sporting and Soccer Services teams to embed privacy considerations into the design, development, and deployment of products and platforms, with the goal of implementing practical, scalable controls across the product lifecycle
• Review and advise on privacy implications of new products, features, technologies, and data uses, including conducting and supporting privacy impact and risk assessments
• Counsel on data-driven initiatives, including analytics, marketing technologies, and emerging technologies such as AI, from a privacy and data governance perspective

Commercial & Vendor Support

• Draft, review, and negotiate a wide variety of technology and data-related agreements, including SaaS agreements, cloud services agreements, software development and licensing agreements, master services agreements, statements of work, and technology integration, data processing, and information security agreements
• Review, draft, and negotiate privacy and data protection provisions in commercial agreements, including data processing agreements and vendor contracts

Regulatory & Risk Management

• Own the cybersecurity and privacy legal strategy and operating model; establish standards, playbooks, escalation paths, and risk tolerances aligned to company goals
• Advise on responses to data subject requests, regulatory inquiries, and privacy-related incidents
• Lead legal readiness for enterprise incident response (tabletops, playbooks, training) and advise on third-party breach response; serve as lead legal point of contact for significant cybersecurity incidents and privacy incidents
• Lead regulatory readiness, audits, and internal assessments related to privacy and data security compliance

Other Transactional Support

• As time permits, assist other transactional lawyers by drafting, reviewing, and negotiating a variety of agreements in support of business operations, including services agreements, event-related agreements, content acquisition agreements, licensing, and facility-related agreements
• Assist other transactional lawyers in developing and maintaining contract templates and playbooks to streamline technology and other contract processes

Expectations

• Be a supportive mentor: share professional and industry knowledge generously, provide active guidance on professional development to more junior staff