Senior Legal Counsel

About the Job

We are seeking a tech-savvy solutions-driven and commercially minded Senior Legal Counsel to join our Yoyo team in Cape Town operating within a dynamic SaaS or fintech environment.

The role centres on drafting reviewing and negotiating technology contracts while also supporting compliance and governance within our regulated payments ecosystem. Youll work closely with a small collaborative Legal & Compliance team that partners across the business - including sales product operations finance and our global shareholder group. 

With a solid understanding of fintech environments and a genuine interest in improving systems youll help shape and enhance legal workflows that support efficiency and growth company wide. 

Your role and responsibilities will include:

Contract Management

• Draft review and negotiate a wide range of commercial and technology/SaaS-related agreements including MSAs DPAs SOWs reseller/partner agreements platform terms SLAs client contracts licensing arrangements partnerships loans and more.

• Apply strong understanding of IP ownership licensing confidentiality limitation of liability data security indemnities and other core technology-industry clauses to ensure company interests are protected.

• Support contracting needs related to the global group structure including shareholder agreements intra-group service arrangements and governance documentation.

• Maintain and update the central contract repository ensuring organisation accuracy and accessibility of all legal documents.

• Lead meetings with Commercial Leads to manage and optimise the contract life cycle and ensure alignment across teams.

• Maintain and improve legal templates negotiation playbooks structured approval workflows and contract lifecycle processes.

• Oversee legal intake prioritisation and contract lifecycle management including renewal tracking.

• Collaborate closely with Sales Product Operations and Engineering to ensure commercial terms are aligned with operational commercial and technical realities.
   

Legal Advice & Counsel

• Provide practical business-oriented legal advice to management and internal teams across operational compliance regulatory and contractual matters.

• Support decision-making by offering clear actionable legal recommendations that align with business objectives.

• Assist the Legal & Compliance team in areas such as POPIA data protection vendor due diligence KYC and internal policy maintenance (with shared team responsibility).
   

Regulatory Compliance

• Monitor relevant industry laws and regulations ensuring Yoyos policies operations and products remain compliant.

• Implement and refine compliance frameworks using digital tools where appropriate to streamline tracking and reporting.

• Support compliance initiatives relating to data protection POPIA vendor onboarding/due diligence and internal governance.

Risk Assessment & Mitigation

• Identify legal risks across operations products and services and collaborate with teams to develop effective mitigation strategies.

• Use data and automation where possible to improve risk monitoring and reporting.

• Support ongoing risk management activities particularly relating to contractual exposure data protection operational processes and vendor engagements.

Training

• Deliver legal and regulatory training to employees including onboarding programs to embed strong compliance culture across the business.

• Equip teams with the knowledge and tools needed to follow policies and manage legal risks effectively.

Qualifications :

Knowledge & Skill Requirements

• LLB degree with 3-5 years post-qualification experience (in-house or law firm).

• Proficient in CLM/contract automation platforms (e.g. Juro).

• Strong commercial contracting experience within SaaS fintech technology or payments industries.

• Solid understanding of IP law data protection requirements software licensing concepts and standard tech contracting risk positions.

• Experience negotiating with enterprise clients and aligning terms with product engineering and operations teams.

• Exposure to shareholder agreements group-company contracting or cross-border legal work is advantageous.

• Familiarity with regulatory frameworks affecting fintech and payments (TPPP Systems Operator PASA SARB) is a plus.

• Highly organised detail-oriented and comfortable managing multiple contracting workstreams.

• Strong communication skills and ability to work collaboratively in a cross-functional environment.

Additional Information :

Ideal Candidates are:

• Tech-savvy and naturally inclined to improve processes through automation.

• Able to design and automate legal workflows or processes.

• Adaptable and comfortable working in a fast-moving scaling tech environment.

• Commercially minded and able to align legal advice with business priorities.

• Collaborative building strong relationships across cross-functional teams.

• Proactive solution-oriented and willing to take ownership of projects.

• Growth-driven open to feedback and committed to continuous improvement.

Our Yoyo values we are looking for a team member that will always live out and demonstrate behaviours aligned to our values:

• Be extremely customer centric: in everything we do serve and delight our customers using data to continuously improve.

• Be a passionate team player: spiral up be positive bring momentum and energy to those around you leave ego at the door and be teachable.

• Be an owner: be accountable and take responsibility. Find solutions learn from your mistakes and own tasks to completion.

• Be world-class at speed: delivering world leading solutions that delight our clients and customers.

• Be curious and creative: constantly innovating exploring learning stretching ourselves pushing the boundaries and thinking out of the box

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time