Director, Legal Operations - Kraken

About Kraken

Payward — the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services, and CF Benchmarks — has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

Founded in 2011, Kraken is trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe, offering spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services.

The Role

The Director, Legal Operations will serve as the centralized owner for Legal’s operations, technology, data, and execution. This role is responsible for Legal AI strategy and implementation, partnering closely with Engineering, Product, Security, Finance, and other stakeholders to modernize and scale Kraken’s legal function.

As Kraken’s regulatory footprint and business complexity grow, this leader will own operational strategy, tooling, process design, and metrics—driving automation, AI adoption, workflow standardization, and vendor optimization. This leader will also oversee financial, resourcing, and demand management foundations to ensure the right work is done by the right resource at the right cost.

Responsibilities

• Serve as DRI for Legal Operations, Legal Technology, and Legal AI strategy, execution, and governance.
• Own Legal’s operating model across workflows, processes, resourcing, and service delivery.
• Own budget planning, forecasting, accruals, and cost modeling in partnership with Finance.
• Manage legal billing and outside counsel relationships.
• Lead resourcing, capacity planning, headcount modeling, role design, and make/buy/automate decisions.
• Manage the legal technology stack (CLM, matter management, AI tools, knowledge management, intake, and spend management).
• Enforce centralized ownership, standardization, and compliance across legal technology.
• Evaluate AI tooling, drive build-vs-buy decisions, translate requirements into technical roadmaps, ensure secure deployment, measure ROI, and lead integrations.
• Establish metrics, dashboards, and controls for workload, demand, spend, cycle times, efficiency, risk, and outcomes.
• Design and operate intake, triage, and demand-management frameworks, including prioritization models, service tiers, SLAs, and self-service pathways.
• Optimize vendor and contractor management, spend controls, billing review, performance measurement, and work allocation.
• Design, implement, and adopt AI-enabled legal workflows at scale.
• Evolve the Legal knowledge management strategy (playbooks, templates, decision trees, guidance) for reuse and automation.
• Prioritize operational, process, and technology initiatives based on impact, risk reduction, and ROI.
• Lead change management, training, and adoption for new processes, technologies, and AI systems.
• Ensure compliance with regulatory, security, privacy, and compliance standards while maintaining operational controls to reduce legal, regulatory, and model risk.
• Enable attorneys to focus on legal judgment, strategy, and advisory work.

Requirements

• 10+ years in Legal Operations, legal technology, process design, finance-adjacent operations, or operational leadership.
• Experience scaling legal operations, legal technology, financial management, and data-driven execution.
• Demonstrated experience driving automation and AI initiatives from strategy through deployment, governance, adoption, and ROI measurement.
• Deep understanding of legal workflows (contracts, regulatory, litigation, investigations, intake, outside counsel management) and process redesign.
• Hands-on experience optimizing legal technology platforms (CLM, matter management, spend management, intake, knowledge management, AI tools).
• Proven ability to translate operational requirements into technical roadmaps and actionable plans.
• Experience establishing metrics, dashboards, controls, and OKRs.
• Strong communication skills to influence legal leaders, executives, and technical teams.
• Experience operating in ambiguity and leading transformation in high-growth environments.

Nice to Haves

• Experience in fintech, crypto, financial services, or regulated industries.
• Background in enterprise AI governance, model risk management, or secure AI deployment.
• People management experience in Legal Operations or adjacent functions.
• Experience benchmarking Legal Operations practices, tooling, and cost structures against industry standards.