Lead Legal Counsel

Job description

Your role Cloover is the financial infrastructure behind Europe's energy transition. We finance residential solar, batteries and heat pumps through 500+ installers across five EU markets, moving around EUR 10M a month against EUR 1.2bn of committed funding. Consumer credit is a regulated business, and Cloover is about to be regulated in more places. Today the licensing work, the installer contracts and every hard call sit with outside counsel and with the CEO's inbox. As our first legal and regulatory, you won't inherit an existing playbook, you will define how legal and regulatory work is done at Cloover and build the team behind it. You will drive market expansion and own high-impact regulatory work that directly determines which European markets we can enter, rather than basic compliance housekeeping. You will take ownership of both halves of the legal domain, obtaining regulatory licenses across new markets and owning the legal side of every contract we sign. You will be the foundational hire for the function, with your first legal analyst joining within 6 to 12 months. You'll report to the CEO/CFO and work closely with institutional lenders, banks and complex financing structures. Your mission General counsel matters Cover the legal work Cloover needs day to day: commercial contracts, corporate questions, employment matters, governance, disputes, policies, and risk decisions. Own the contract estate: installer and partner agreements, customer terms, funding, receivables and lender documentation. Draft and negotiate directly, alongside the finance and commercial teams. Keep contract templates current and maintain an organized contract register. Financial, regulatory and compliance Lead Cloover's financial and regulatory legal work across Europe and other markets: licensing route selection, applications, regulatory analysis, and the workplan behind it. Build the compliance, policy and governance suite from the ground up. Track consumer credit and financial services regulation as it moves, including CCD II in Germany, and translate these changes into actionable business operations. Be a credible counterpart for regulators, financing partners, banks and outside counsel. External resources and team building Choose, instruct, and control outside counsel and advisors across markets. Set the scope, hold the budget, and judge output quality. Bring the answers back in-house rather than routing every question out. Hire and lead an analyst within 6 to 12 months, and build the legal and compliance function from there. Your profile 8-10+ years in a regulated financial services environment (consumer credit, lending, payments or fintech), including time in-house rather than advisory work only. You have drafted and negotiated commercial contracts as the principal: you owned the redline, the fallback positions and the final call, with no supervising partner behind you. You have built regulatory frameworks yourself, not only advised on them. This includes policies you wrote, applications you assembled, and positions you defended to a regulator, auditor, or lender. You are able and willing to hold a named regulatory officeholder role where a regulator requires one. If you have held or been approved for one, tell us which role and in which jurisdiction. You are comfortable being the only lawyer in the room, and you say no in writing when it matters. Excellent written and spoken English, our working language. Based in Berlin and energized by being in the room. We're intentionally office-first: decisions get made in real time, prototypes get stress-tested over lunch, and the founding team is ten meters away. If that's how you thrive, you'll feel at home here. Nice to have (but not required): Professional German (B2 or above), enough to work in German-language contracts and directly with German counsel and authorities. A legal qualification in an EU jurisdiction, England and Wales, or a comparable bar. Don't meet every requirement? Apply anyway. We hire for potential and perspective. Credentials are a starting point, not a ceiling. How we hire We keep things transparent and respect your time. Most go from first call to offer in under three weeks. Intro call (30 min): We want to understand what you're looking for, not just screen your CV. Hiring manager interview (30 min): We go deep into your experience, your thinking, and how you approach problems. Case study (1 hour): You get the brief in advance. We care about your approach, not whether you land on the right answer. Offer & signed contract. Need any adjustments at any stage? Just let us know. Why us? Performance pay. Strong base and a bonus tied to outcomes, recognised when it happens rather than locked behind annual cycles. AI-first & unthrottled. Unlimited enterprise-grade AI, no caps, no approval process. Every role, every team. The grunt work disappears so you can focus on what actually requires human judgement. Real ownership on a real mission. From day one you're shaping decisions that impact thousands of installers. We're not just building software. We're powering the energy transition across Europe. Grow faster than anywhere else. You'll work directly alongside the founding team and world-class investors. If you're building toward your own venture one day, there's no better room to be in. Perks & Benefits Latest Apple hardware in our Prenzlauer Berg office 25 days vacation €500 per year learning & development budget WHOOP Peak, covered. After six months with us, we cover your WHOOP Peak membership in full Urban Sports Club (M) membership Deutschlandticket , fully covered Cloover Power Tariff: our own green power tariff, with the monthly base fee on us Free catered lunch every day in the office (via Bella&Bona) Free dinner every day in the office (via Wolt) Fully stocked kitchen with breakfast, snacks, and drinks Team events with €50 per person per month Company discounts via Corporate Benefits and FutureBens