About the job

At American Express, we know that with the right backing, people and businesses have the power to progress in incredible ways. Whether we’re supporting our customers’ financial confidence to move ahead, taking commerce to new heights, or encouraging people to explore the world, our colleagues are constantly redefining what’s possible — and we’re proud to back each other every step of the way.

When you join Team Amex, you become part of a diverse community of over 60,000 colleagues, all with a common goal to deliver an exceptional customer experience every day. Here, you’ll learn and grow as we champion your meaningful career journey with programs, benefits, and flexibility to back you personally and professionally. Every colleague shares in the company’s success.

Together, we’ll win as a team, striving to uphold our company values and powerful backing promise to our customers, communities, and each other every day. And, we’ll do it with integrity and in an environment where everyone is seen, heard and feels like they truly belong.

Join #TeamAmex and let’s lead the way together.

Where great legal minds influence business strategy.

Our mission is to protect and strengthen American Express through legal expertise and strategic advice. This helps our business partners handle risk, explore opportunities and deliver on the company’s promise of outstanding products and services. Given the dynamic nature of the global payments industry and the valued partnership between our legal team and the business, it is imperative to attract and develop people by:

• Providing rich work experiences and opportunities for professional development
• Recognizing and rewarding those who drive and deliver results
• Respecting and valuing diversity, integrity, and personal accountability

Against this backdrop, we are seeking an experienced lawyer to provide a broad range of legal advice and strategic support for Amex Digital Labs. Amex Digital Labs catalyzes innovation at American Express by originating, incubating and managing products and platforms that are essential to its customers’ digital lives. This is a fast-paced team that leverages emerging technologies to develop digital payment and financial services products, customer service solutions and engaging membership experiences. It values creativity, customer centricity, and innovation, often collaborating with top technology companies and strategic partners to bring the next generation of products to market.

You will be an integral part of the team of lawyers supporting legal work across the broad remit of Amex Digital Labs, including partnership and contract work, product development, regulatory advice and strategy formation. You will lead projects directly and foster meaningful partnerships and collaboration across the larger legal community.

This role sits in the wider Digital, Strategic Partnerships & Legal Risk Management team. The team provides legal support for a range of global business teams and their remits leading digital innovation and strategic partnerships for American Express.

Main Responsibilities

• Drafting and negotiating commercial agreements for various digital-related partnerships, including sophisticated strategic agreements, service agreements, partnerships and licenses.
• Partnering closely with business colleagues to explore and evaluate potential partnership integrations and pilots, understanding their concerns and challenges, and using creativity and problem-solving to quickly action solutions.
• Advising business, product and engineering teams on innovative products, from conceptualization to development to launch.
• Crafting user experiences, terms and conditions, customer disclosures and communications.
• Engaging in cross-functional collaboration to address privacy, consumer protection, compliance, bank regulatory, intellectual property, data security, data strategy, and other issues to harness relevant expertise and ensure effective business enablement and risk management.
• Supporting a culture of innovation, education and process excellence to continuously optimize and streamline processes.
• Engaging in strategic projects to advance pioneering business opportunities.

Candidate Profile

Minimum qualifications:

• JD with admission to practice law in the US.
• Over 5 years of relevant legal work experience in a law firm or in-house legal environment.

Preferred qualifications and experience:

• Structuring, drafting and negotiating commercial agreements, partnerships and pilots.
• Advising on new product development in a digital context.
• Working in FinTech, payments and banking or the wider financial services space.
• Familiarity with one or more of the following topics: mobile payments, A2A payments, remittances, web 3.0, crypto assets, blockchain, DeFi, digital identity, data issues, tokenization, digital UX or other innovate products enabled by new technologies.

The successful candidate will have:

• A passion for the digital world and a keen curiosity about the evolving external environment and new frontiers in technology and business.
• Developed analytical and problem-solving skills, with an ability to generate creative solutions; versatility, with the ability to apply and adapt legal analysis, learnings and approaches to new and adjacent contexts.
• An ability to communicate complex issues clearly and persuasively and to synthesize substantive legal material for business partners; to act as a trusted advisor.
• Strong interpersonal skills, executive presence and comfort interacting at all levels within the organization; excellent collaboration and teamwork skills, with thoughtful approaches to build relationships and partner with others to achieve success.
• A focus on innovation within legal; a willingness to examine, innovate and explore different approaches for delivery of legal services and risk management.
• Interest in leading, developing and mentoring others.

Salary Range: $170,000.00 to $255,000.00 annually + sales incentive + equity (if applicable) + benefits

The above represents the expected salary range for this job requisition. Ultimately, in determining your pay, we'll consider your location, experience, and other job-related factors.

American Express is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, disability status, age, or any other status protected by law.

We back our colleagues with the support they need to thrive, professionally and personally. That's why we have Amex Flex, our enterprise working model that provides greater flexibility to colleagues while ensuring we preserve the important aspects of our unique in-person culture. Depending on role and business needs, colleagues will either work onsite, in a hybrid model (combination of in-office and virtual days) or fully virtually.US Job Seekers/Employees - Click here to view the “EEO is the Law” poster and supplement and the Pay Transparency Policy Statement.

If the links do not work, please copy and paste the following URLs in a new browser window: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/posters to access the three posters.