Head of Legal

About Tensec

Tensec moves money across borders for the small and mid-sized businesses that trade globally - FX, payments, and transaction banking built for a São Paulo exporter or a Monterrey importer, not for a Fortune 500 treasury desk. Cross-border B2B is a $50 trillion market still running on infrastructure designed for large corporates. We're building the version everyone else can use.

We're live in Mexico and Brazil, opening the US this year, and onboarding enterprise clients moving hundreds of millions a month. Founded in 2023 by a team that has built and exited startups and run global teams at PayPal, Credit Karma, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. Backed by Quiet Capital, Costanoa Ventures, Renegade Partners, Coinbase Ventures, Clocktower, and WillowTree, plus angels including Jason Pate (Chief Strategy Officer, Plaid) and Bora Chung (ex-Chief Experience Officer, Bill.com; Board Member, Remitly).

Your mission

Tensec is expanding across the US, Brazil, and Mexico, you will own the legal infrastructure that makes that possible. . You build it. Most of the regulated products we offer, bank accounts, wallets, credit, move through partners, and the right structure changes by jurisdiction: in Mexico and Brazil, providing these services directly or through partners works differently than a typical US sponsor-bank arrangement.

You are the legal function, you advise the founders and executive team 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.

Outcomes: your first 12-18 months

• A regulatory map people actually use. Every provision that applies to Tensec's products, by country and by product, kept current and understood by compliance and every operational team that touches it.
• Contracts that move in days. Templates, playbooks, and a review process that get standard client and vendor agreements signed fast, without you personally touching every page.
• Compliance with real legal backing. The compliance team equipped with clear, actionable guidance across US, Brazil, and Mexico requirements.
• External counsel that is sustainable A network of outside counsel, including local counsel in Brazil and Mexico, managed strategically, with the institutional knowledge staying in-house instead of walking out the door with them.
• Governance that runs clean. Entity management across the US, Brazil, and Mexico, board and shareholder matters, and financings executed without drama.
• A legal team built to scale. Hired, developed, and organized so the function grows with the company instead of becoming the bottleneck.

Also on your plate

• Structuring and negotiating the partnerships that deliver Tensec's regulated products, including partnership models in Mexico and Brazil that don't look like a US sponsor-bank deal.
• Reviewing marketing and advertising content against each market's rules before it ships.
• Protecting Tensec's IP, trademarks, brand, websites, content - in every market we do business in.
• Handling pre-litigation matters and litigation if it arises (none today).
• Tracking AI governance, data, and consumer protection requirements as they emerge, and making sure market entry and product launches account for them.
• Serving as the legal backstop for People & HR on employment, contractor, and benefits questions in every market.
• Building and maintaining the legal knowledge base, templates, regulatory memos, jurisdiction summaries - so guidance lives in the workflow, not in your head.

What you bring

• 15+ years of legal experience, with real time in financial services, fintech, payments, or another regulated industry, in-house experience strongly preferred, leading a legal function is a strong plus.
• Board and governance work you've actually run: consents, resolutions, venture financings, multi-entity structures.
• Close working knowledge of BSA/AML, FinCEN, OFAC, and KYB/KYC standards, and what BCB, BACEN, and CNBV actually expect in practice.
• Experience structuring or negotiating partnerships for regulated financial products delivered through banks, licenses, or program partners.
• Experience leading a distributed team across time zones and coordinating local counsel across jurisdictions.
• Active bar membership in New York.
• Fluent English; Spanish or Portuguese a meaningful plus, given the volume of Brazil and Mexico contracts running through this role.
• Based in New York, NY, with 3 days per week in our office. Able to travel.

How you work

• Commercial enabler. You treat legal as the fastest safe path to yes, not a wall someone else has to climb.
• High agency. When a contract is blocking a deal or a question has no clean answer, you drive to resolution, you don't wait for outside counsel to tell you what to do.
• Builder.. You design the legal function for ten times today's complexity, then build the version that works now.
• Trusted with the hard calls. Founders and the board bring you the messy questions because they trust your judgment on them.

Nice to have

• Exposure to AI regulatory frameworks or AI accountability standards in financial services.
• Experience with cross-border trade finance structures.

Compensation & benefits

The expected salary range for this role is $250,000 to $275,000 per year. Actual compensation will depend on experience, skills, and qualifications.

• Equity
• Medical, dental and vision
• 15 days paid time off
• Learning and development budget

Equal opportunity

Tensec is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

Tensec is a diverse and inclusive company committed to growing a diverse and inclusive team. We invite people of all backgrounds and identities to apply. Additionally, we encourage everyone to share which pronouns you wish for us to use when addressing you (i.e., she/her, he/him, they/them).

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. Please let your recruiter know if you require an accommodation during the application or interview process.

Even if you don't meet 100% of the qualifications, we encourage you to apply.