Head of Legal and Compliance

Join Reward, a leading company in loyalty, commerce media, payments data analytics, and AI-driven commerce technology. As the Head of Legal and Compliance, you will lead the legal, risk, and compliance function, reporting directly to the Chief Financial Officer. You will set the legal and compliance strategy for Reward, provide clear and practical legal advice to the executive team, and support the expansion of Reward into new international markets. You will also oversee the intellectual property position, data protection, and compliance framework for Reward. This is a hands-on leadership role that requires a risk-based mindset and the ability to present legal concepts clearly to a non-legal audience.

• Set and lead the legal, risk and compliance strategy for Reward, aligned to the commercial plan and to the requirements of the group.
• Act as the executive team’s principal legal adviser, providing clear, practical and timely advice on commercial, regulatory, data and reputational matters.
• Own the group’s contracting positions for Reward: the templates, fallback positions and playbooks, and the determination of which positions are non-negotiable, which are tradeable and at what price.

• Reward seeks a commercially minded leader who is comfortable holding a line with the legal, procurement and security teams of the largest banks and retailers in the world, and who wants the breadth of a function that spans commercial contracting, data protection, artificial intelligence, regulation, compliance and certification
• Experience of leading a legal or legal and compliance function, including direct management of qualified professionals
• A minimum of ten years’ post-qualification experience, with a substantial period spent in-house
• Qualified solicitor or barrister in England and Wales, or qualified in another common law jurisdiction
• An international orientation, with familiarity with the UK and EU legal regimes and comfort working across multiple jurisdictions
• A track record of leading significant negotiations personally and to conclusion, including with the legal and procurement functions of major financial institutions
• Command of the service level, security, liability and indemnity architecture behind those agreements, and a clear grasp of the commercial consequences of each
• Substantial technology and commercial contracting experience: platform, SaaS and licensing terms, master services agreements, data licensing and data sharing, API and integration agreements, and inbound cloud, hosting and professional services contracts
• Knowledge of FCA regulation, PCI DSS, the UK and EU GDPR and data usage rights as they apply to a supplier operating in the banking and loyalty sector
• Familiarity with the regulatory requirements imposed on suppliers to regulated financial institutions
• Substantive data protection expertise under the UK and EU GDPR, applied to high-volume personal data processing
• Working knowledge of AI governance and of the EU AI Act, and the judgment to set a workable internal position ahead of settled practice
• Experience of banking partnerships, loyalty programmes and redemptions is a distinct advantage
• Experience of owning or overseeing a compliance framework and a risk register in a regulated or client-audited environment
• Familiarity with information security certification, in particular PCI DSS and ISO 27001, and with the client assurance exercises that depend on them
• A record of developing people, with the appetite to lead a small team closely rather than through layers
• Sound commercial judgment, a practical and problem-solving orientation, and scrupulous adherence to legal and ethical requirements
• Credibility and presence with an executive team, with the confidence to challenge as well as to advise
• The capacity to explain legal and regulatory concepts in plain English to a non-legal audience
• Experience within a group structure with a listed parent, including working with a group legal or group risk function
• In-house experience in a payments, loyalty, banking technology or data analytics business, or as a supplier to regulated financial institutions
• A recognised data protection qualification, for example the CIPP/E
• Experience of the DIFC, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other CEMEA markets
• Practical experience of using AI tools to streamline legal and commercial workflows