Senior Legal Counsel

About the role

Tensec is expanding rapidly across the US, Brazil, and Mexico, and the legal infrastructure that enables this growth needs to be built correctly — by someone who understands financial services regulation, commercial contracting, and multi-jurisdictional compliance all at once.

This is not a policy-writing or external-counsel-management role. You are the legal infrastructure. You will advise the CCO and COO directly, own Tensec’s regulatory development roadmap across BSA/AML, FinCEN, and OFAC, manage all material legal agreements, and build the legal scaffolding that lets Tensec enter new markets on its own terms.

What You'll Do

• Legal Affairs Leadership: Serve as Tensec’s primary internal legal voice across all US matters — corporate (other than board matters), contractual, marketing, regulatory, and risk — advising the COO and CCO directly at the operating level

• Manage MTL obligations across all US jurisdictions and monitor the regulatory landscape as Tensec expands into new corridors and states

• Direct and coordinate Tensec’s existing external legal network; manage outside counsel relationships strategically and cost-efficiently

• Lead legal review on all client agreements, vendor contracts, and external partnerships; provide legal input on banking and financing relationships as they flow through you, with relationship ownership at COO level

• Build the legal infrastructure including templates, playbooks, and review processes that scale and that the GC/CLO will inherit as the organization grows

• Compliance Advisory: Inform the CCO organization on US and cross-jurisdictional legal requirements that affect how the compliance program must be structured; you are the legal input, not the compliance owner

• Own compliance program ownership and external compliance advisory relationships at COO level; your role is to ensure the compliance team has the legal substance it needs to execute well

• AI & Emerging Regulation: Monitor and advise on AI governance requirements applicable to Tensec’s US and international operations, including emerging AI transparency and accountability obligations at the federal and state level

• Serve as the internal legal resource for People & HR matters across all three jurisdictions; support the COO on employment, contractor, and benefits questions

• Build and maintain a legal knowledge base — contract templates, regulatory memos, jurisdiction summaries — so that legal guidance is embedded in operations rather than siloed

What We're Looking For

• 7+ years of legal experience, with meaningful time spent in financial services, fintech, payments, or a regulated industry — in-house experience strongly preferred
• Grounded in legal and compliance fundamentals: background in law or compliance with close working knowledge of AML/CFT obligations, BSA/AML, FinCEN, OFAC, and KYB/KYC standards, and the regulatory expectations of institutions like BCB, BACEN, CNBV
• Experienced enough with large institutions to know what you are walking away from, and why the equity trajectory of a company like this is worth more than the certainty you are leaving behind
• Comfortable at multi-jurisdictional scale: trade finance structures, cross-border regulatory complexity, and AI-governed compliance systems are not unfamiliar territory
• A natural institutional builder: you think about what the legal function looks like at ten times complexity before designing it for today
• Fluent in English; Spanish or Portuguese a meaningful plus given our Brazil and Mexico operations and the volume of cross-border contracts flowing through this role
• Based in New York, NY or Miami, FL; ability to travel
• Active bar membership is a plus in New York, Florida, or another US jurisdiction
• Experience advising on MTL compliance, MSB registration, or US state-level money transmitter licensing
• Exposure to AI regulatory frameworks, data protection obligations (LGPD, GDPR, CCPA), or AI accountability standards in financial services

To Thrive in This Role, You Have:

• Genuine fluency in how cross-border financial services, regulatory frameworks, and compliance programs actually work, not just what the policy document says
• A high agency: when a legal question is unclear or a contract is blocking a deal, you drive to resolution without waiting for external counsel to tell you what to do
• A commercial orientation: you understand that legal is a growth enabler at Tensec, not a gatekeeper, and you structure your work accordingly