Group Chief Compliance & Legal Officer

Job description

Reporting Line Reports directly to the CEO . Leads a compliance function that includes the Group Paralegal (direct report) and all compliance personnel embedded across the CXM Group of Companies. Location Remote (EU timezone preferred) This is a fully remote role. EU timezone alignment is preferred to ensure effective overlap with key offices across the CXM Group. Occasional travel may be required for regulator meetings and visits to regional teams. General Purpose CXM Group is building a compliance architecture across six business lines and multiple jurisdictions simultaneously — this role owns that build. The group is at an inflection point: multiple licensing processes are running in parallel, including a Norwegian crypto exchange being structured for MiCA passporting, a South African broker-dealer acquisition, a VARA application in the UAE, and prospective acquisitions in LATAM and Southeast Asia. The CCO exists to hold this together — ensuring that a fast-moving, multi-asset, multi-jurisdictional expansion programme stays regulatorily sound, that new entities are acquired and integrated without compliance exposure, and that the group's licensing pipeline converts into durable, operating authorisations across FX, CFDs, crypto, prediction markets, prop trading, and education. This is a role for someone who has operated across tier-one and emerging-market regimes simultaneously and has the regulator-facing credibility to show for it. Specific Objectives Build and deploy a group-wide compliance reporting framework Within the first three months, establish a structured compliance reporting framework covering all regulated entities across the CXM Group — including defined reporting lines, cadences, and escalation paths that give the CEO and board clear, timely visibility of the group's regulatory posture. Create an AI-enabled legal document database Within six months, deliver a searchable, indexed, and cross-referenced repository of all legal documentation across the group — structured for AI-assisted retrieval so that agreements, licences, policies, and regulatory correspondence can be surfaced and compared at speed. Establish and embed internal legal SLAs Within the first three months, define and operationalise service-level agreements for all internal legal workflows: standard contract reviews turned in 24 hours; new contract drafting completed within 48 hours; policy creation on agreed timelines. Compliance with these SLAs to be tracked and reported. Deploy legal and compliance risk monitoring tools Within six months, implement risk monitoring tooling across all business verticals and target markets — covering FX, CFDs, crypto, prediction markets, prop trading, and education — providing structured, ongoing visibility of regulatory and legal risk exposure across the group. Drive the live licensing and acquisition pipeline to defined milestones Own delivery against the group's active regulatory and M&A programme: South African broker-dealer acquisition and VARA (UAE) licence obtained by Q3 2026; VARA application submitted by Q4 2026 and licence granted by Q3 2027; MiCA passporting for the Norwegian crypto exchange secured by Q2 2027; LATAM and Southeast Asia acquisition targets scoped and structured by Q1 2027. Key Activities Oversee group-wide legal and compliance communications Manage all inbound and outbound communications across the compliance and legal function — ensuring consistency of position, appropriate escalation, and clear audit trails across all CXM Group entities. Monitor brand, regulatory, and compliance risk Run ongoing monitoring of online brand exposure and regulatory risk signals across all business verticals and target markets, using dedicated tooling to surface issues before they become regulatory events. Research target markets and emerging regulatory requirements Conduct structured research on new and existing jurisdictions — tracking legislative developments, regulatory guidance, and enforcement trends across FX, CFDs, crypto, prediction markets, prop trading, and education to keep the group's risk exposure visible and current. Build and maintain reporting infrastructure with Ops and IT Work cross-functionally with Operations and IT to design, implement, and maintain the compliance reporting systems and dashboards needed to give leadership real-time visibility of the group's regulatory posture. Inventory, organise, and analyse all group legal agreements Own the end-to-end legal document function: audit existing agreements across all entities, build and maintain the AI-enabled document repository, and ensure all contracts are indexed, cross-referenced, and accessible for rapid retrieval. Manage regulatory relationships and respond to inquiries Serve as the primary point of contact for regulators across all jurisdictions — preparing responses, managing ongoing dialogue, and coordinating regulator visits or meetings with appropriate precision and consistency. Set and enforce contract throughput standards Define the SLA framework for all internal legal workflows — 24 hours for standard contract reviews, 48 hours for new contract drafting — and hold the Group Paralegal and compliance staff accountable for delivery against those standards. The CCO personally handles high-stakes, novel, or regulator-facing agreements; standard throughput runs through the team. Key Competences Two competences are non-negotiable (and typically take a decade of multi-jurisdictional work to build) — everything else can be ramped. If you don't have these, the rest of the profile doesn't matter. Non-negotiable Multi-jurisdictional regulatory knowledge Demonstrated command of tier-one regimes (CySEC, FCA, NFA, ASIC) and offshore/emerging-market frameworks (UAE, Mauritius, Seychelles, SVG, Cambodia), with working knowledge of MiCA and crypto licensing regimes globally. This is the core of the mandate — live deals are already in motion. Regulator-facing credibility Confidence and competence in direct regulator engagement — managing inquiries, coordinating responses, and representing the group's compliance posture with consistency across jurisdictions. The group has active regulator relationships that need an owner from day one. Strong advantage M&A and licensing fluency Ability to support acquisition structuring and entity integration from a compliance perspective — assessing regulatory exposure, coordinating with external counsel, and managing parallel licensing processes without dropping threads. AI-enabled legal operations Experience deploying AI tooling in legal workflows — document retrieval, contract review acceleration, risk monitoring — is a strong advantage. Candidates without a deployment track record must demonstrate a concrete plan for rapid adoption and the aptitude to execute it. Function leadership and SLA ownership Ability to set standards, delegate effectively, and hold a team accountable for throughput — running the contract and compliance function at scale without becoming the bottleneck. Personal involvement reserved for high-stakes, novel, or regulator-facing matters. Likely Current Job Chief Compliance Officer (multi-jurisdictional broker or crypto exchange) The closest equivalent — already holding a CCO title across FX, CFDs, or crypto at a group with multiple regulated entities and active regulator relationships. If your current seat is steady-state and you're ready to own a live build across six asset classes and a dozen jurisdictions, this is the step up. Head of Compliance (tier-one regulated broker) One level below CCO at a CySEC, FCA, or ASIC-regulated firm — strong regulatory depth, ready to move into group-level ownership. If you've hit the ceiling of what a single-jurisdiction, single-entity compliance role can teach you, this is where the complexity scales. Regulatory Affairs Director (fintech or crypto) Licensing and regulator-facing experience across multiple jurisdictions, possibly without the full compliance function remit yet. If you've been the technical expert behind the licensing programme and want to own the outcome end-to-end, this is the mandate. M&A Compliance Lead (financial services) Embedded in acquisition structuring and entity integration at a PE-backed or multi-entity financial services group. If you've been supporting deals from the compliance side and want a seat where M&A fluency is a core expectation rather than a secondary contribution, this is it. Senior Legal Counsel / Head of Legal (retail broker or crypto exchange) Contract-heavy, regulator-facing, with compliance responsibility baked in — a common feeder at smaller multi-jurisdictional groups where legal and compliance sit close together. If you've been carrying both functions informally and want a title and mandate that reflects the actual scope, this role makes it official. Employer Value Proposition Most CCO roles at this level are maintenance jobs — one regulator, one entity, one asset class. This one is not. Genuine architectural ownership across six asset classes and a dozen jurisdictions FX, CFDs, crypto, prediction markets, prop trading, and education — running simultaneously, across tier-one and emerging-market regimes, with live licensing and M&A deals already in motion. The compliance architecture doesn't exist yet at group level. You're building it. By the end of year one, you'll be able to say you built a multi-jurisdictional compliance architecture from scratch, closed live licensing deals across MiCA, VARA, and emerging markets simultaneously, and stood up an AI-enabled legal ops function before almost anyone in the segment has done it. That is a résumé paragraph no single-jurisdiction maintenance role can produce. Direct line to the CEO — and the mandate authority that comes with it This role reports directly to the CEO, not to a CLO or CFO. In a live licensing and M&A environment where decisions need to move fast, that access matters: no layers between compliance judgment and executive action. Many group-level CCO seats don't offer this — this one does. A live deal pipeline, not a hypothetical one MiCA passporting, VARA in the UAE, a South African broker-dealer acquisition, and prospective acquisitions in LATAM and Southeast Asia — these are active, not aspirational. You'll be in the room on deals that will define the group's regulatory footprint for the next decade. A first-mover opportunity in AI-enabled legal ops The mandate includes building the AI-enabled legal ops function at group level — document retrieval, contract throughput acceleration, risk monitoring — in a segment where almost nobody has done it yet at this scale. If you've started deploying AI in legal workflows and want a seat where that capability shapes the entire function, this is it. Group-level mandate, not a function-level seat Functional authority over compliance personnel across all CXM Group entities. The scope matches the title — and the title reflects the actual job. Fully remote No relocation. No commute. Occasional travel when it matters — regulator meetings, regional teams — and otherwise, work from wherever you do your best thinking. A genuinely uncommon opportunity Multi-asset, multi-jurisdictional, M&A-active, AI-forward, fully remote — and at a scale that is still early enough for you to leave a visible mark. Roles with this combination of complexity and ownership don't come up often. Compensation Compensation is bespoke to the hire. We'd rather understand what you bring to the table and have a direct conversation about expectations than anchor the discussion prematurely. The package will be competitive with the scope of the mandate and consist of base + bonus that is tied to hitting agreed KPIs. Assessment Process This process is designed to match the weight of the mandate. A seat with this scope — live licensing, active M&A, and a compliance architecture being built from scratch — deserves a rigorous hire, and we make no apology for that. Every stage is purposeful, and every interviewer is there for a reason. Group Legal Counsel — regulatory and legal technical depth across jurisdictions, plus practical M&A case questions to assess acquisition structuring judgment. CHRO — leadership style, function-building track record, and cultural alignment with CXM Group's operating style. CEO — strategic judgment, mandate clarity, and the candidate's vision for the compliance architecture they'd build and own. Board members — select Board involvement at final stage, focused on governance credibility and long-term fit at group level. The full process is designed to run within one month. We move quickly and respect that your time is finite — every stage is as much your opportunity to assess CXM as ours to assess you. If you take your next move as seriously as we take this hire, that's exactly the kind of conversation we want to have.