Senior Counsel, Transactions (Capital Markets)

About the role

Circle is one of the world’s leading internet financial platform companies, building the foundation of a more open, global economy through digital assets, payment applications, and programmable blockchain infrastructure. The role involves supporting Circle's global capital markets business, including crypto exchanges, digital asset market makers, and institutional capital markets partners, as well as Circle's Arc network.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a trusted legal partner to Circle's capital markets business development team, working collaboratively and building strong lines of communication across global deal teams — with a primary focus on supporting crypto exchange partnerships, digital asset market maker agreements, and institutional capital markets transactions globally.
• Structure, negotiate, and draft complex crypto, fintech, and capital markets agreements — including exchange listing and integration agreements, market maker and liquidity provision agreements, co-funding, credit and collateral arrangements, and USYC tokenized collateral transactions — addressing legal risk in business-centric ways with the goal of strengthening commercial partnerships and advancing revenue opportunities.
• Support Arc's capital markets go-to-market, including drafting and negotiating agreements with exchanges, liquidity providers, validators, and institutional partners participating in Arc's lending, borrowing, FX, and tokenized asset use cases.
• Create and expand contract templates and playbooks for capital markets transaction types, including exchange, market maker, and digital asset collateral frameworks, to increase speed and consistency across the deal pipeline.
• Aid in the development and implementation of processes, procedures, and metrics (including efficient contracting workflows) to increase the overall effectiveness of legal services provided to global capital markets teams.
• Aid business leaders with contract interpretation and management as they execute deals with exchanges, trading firms, custodians, and other institutional counterparties globally.
• Remain current on developments in crypto capital markets, digital assets, tokenization, stablecoins, and blockchain infrastructure — including Arc's role as a settlement and capital markets layer — to provide sound, practical transactional advice across Circle's institutional go-to-market motion.

Requirements

• 10+ years of legal experience in capital markets, crypto, or financial services.
• 3+ years of prior experience at a top-tier law firm.
• J.D. (or foreign equivalent) and active membership in at least one U.S. State Bar.
• Extensive experience drafting and negotiating complex crypto, fintech, and capital markets agreements, including exchange, market maker, liquidity provision, collateral, and digital asset transactions.
• Familiarity with TradFi capital markets concepts — including derivatives, structured products, collateral management, and market infrastructure — and how these intersect with digital asset and blockchain ecosystems.
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams on high-impact, institutional partnerships, with a focus on capital markets, exchanges, and market maker business teams.
• Ability to manage a variety of initiatives, matters, and transactions requiring analysis and distillation of relevant laws, regulations, and industry standards, ideally in a financial services, fintech, or crypto environment.
• Ability to identify regulatory, tax, accounting, and other potential implications and quarterback deals to ensure all relevant stakeholders are aligned on transactions.
• Comfort leveraging AI tools to streamline routine tasks and enhance workflow efficiency, while exercising independent legal judgment and maintaining full responsibility for reviewing, verifying, and validating outputs to ensure legal accuracy and mitigate risk.
• Willingness to participate in negotiation calls outside standard business hours to support global deal teams.

Preferred Requirements

• Familiarity with the legal and regulatory landscape across key global markets relevant to Circle's business, including digital assets, stablecoins, tokenization, and capital markets — with an understanding of how product and technology requirements intersect with those frameworks.
• Prior exposure to ISDA documentation, master trading agreements, or other capital markets framework agreements.
• Prior experience working with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Financial Supervisory Service regulations.
• Experience/familiarity with Slack, Apple MacOS, ChatGPT and other AI tools, and GSuite.

What You'll Bring To Circle

You are passionate about financial technology and the potential of cryptocurrency and blockchains — a team player with a sense of humor who enjoys both learning and mentoring. Commercially minded, you keep the business objective front and center and communicate complex ideas clearly, both verbally and in writing, in a way that allows clients to act on them. You thrive in evolving, fast-moving environments, manage multiple priorities with ease, and exercise sound judgment under pressure — equally comfortable working autonomously and collaborating as part of a team. You are obsessively organized, energetic, and deeply accountable, with a strong sense of ownership over your actions and decisions.