Legal & Compliance - sole hire, build with AI

About this role

Join an early-stage startup.
Accelerate economic opportunity.

Join us as Kovo's sole legal and compliance hire. There is no legal team to join. You are the function. You'll own legal and compliance end-to-end for the business we run today and for the products we launch next, and you'll take each new product from zero to one.

This role is a good fit if:

- You're a practicing attorney who has done legal and compliance work inside a high-growth fintech startup and wants to run the whole function yourself rather than inherit a team.

- Your first question on any new initiative is "what is the smallest set of obligations that gets us there," not "here is everything we'll need to comply with."

- You've worked in an engineering, product, or business role before (or alongside) your legal career, and you think like an operator.

- You'd rather automate a task out of existence than own it forever.

- You're interested in setting the foundation for a multi-product company.

ABOUT US

- Kovo is expanding access to financial tools for people historically excluded from the traditional credit system. We believe everyone deserves the opportunity for economic independence, and we're building products that help people establish financial identity and unlock opportunity.

- Over the past three years, Kovo has grown revenue 20x while maintaining exceptional capital efficiency. We rank above the 99th percentile in revenue per employee benchmarks, reflecting the leverage of a small, high-performing team.

- The team combines the ambition of a venture-scale company with the discipline of a profitable business. We reached positive free cash flow early in our lifecycle, allowing us to grow with less dilution and focus on building for the long term.

- Kovo is backed by Inspired Capital and Homebrew, and built by alumni from Plaid, Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, Innovis, Chime, Honey, Possible, Monzo, Tapcheck, OppFi, Splash, Mercury, Instacart, and more. We're looking for exceptional people to help us scale the company another 20x and beyond.

WHY YOU MIGHT BE EXCITED ABOUT US

- Direct impact on millions of people's ability to access credit

- High ownership with minimal bureaucracy

- Speed, learning, and impact are core values

WHY YOU MIGHT NOT BE EXCITED ABOUT US

- Roles and priorities evolve quickly

- Some systems and processes are still being built

- The pace of execution and career growth is intense (not optimized for work-life balance)

- You will be the only lawyer and your leverage comes from agents, outside counsel, and cross-functional teamwork, not a dedicated team

ABOUT THE ROLE

Kovo is shifting from a one-product company to a multi-product company. This role sets the legal and compliance foundation for that shift. It is career-defining in that sense.

What you inherit

- A legal and compliance posture that partners, banks, and other stakeholders have repeatedly told us is stronger than what they see at companies our size, and at companies far larger.

- Much of it is already codified or automated and has run smoothly for years. There are no fires to put out.

- Our previous counsel built this posture from scratch over three years and left when the build was done. That's the proof the model works, and it's why the seat is empty, not a team.

- The minimum requirement is that nothing slips as growth accelerates. The expectation is that the manual work keeps shrinking: fewer manual steps, fewer obligations we carry out of habit, more of it running on its own. You own this fully, but it will be a small share of your time.

Where your time goes

- Most of your time goes to standing up new products from zero to one, then scaling them. We're building consumer financial products for the same audience we serve today: people who are low-income, subprime, or underserved by traditional finance. We're choosing products that get more attractive, not less, as AI sits in the loop on how consumers transact with businesses. We believe consumer behavior gets more rational as AI mediates those transactions, and we're building for that trend.

- For each product, the first question is design. What is the version that delivers the customer outcome with the fewest licenses, the fewest new obligations, and the most reuse of what we already hold? You work that out with product and engineering before anything is built. Over time you reconcile each product's posture across the suite so it reads as one coherent, minimal posture, not several stacked on top of each other.

Scope

- Primary: regulatory and product work. Marketing review, partnerships, licensing, policies and procedures, litigation defense, dispute resolution, exams and audits, bank and partner relationships, BSA/AML/KYC and fraud policy, and privacy.

- Secondary: corporate, tax, intellectual property, labor and employment, and whatever else a growing company needs.

- You are not completely alone on the admin and will have cross-functional support from business operations and customer experience where absolutely necessary.

- You report to one of the founders based in Austin, TX. We are fully remote. Austin is a plus, not a requirement.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Stand up new products with the smallest footprint that works

- Work with product and engineering on the design of each new product so it delivers the customer outcome with the fewest licenses and obligations, reusing what we already hold wherever possible.

- Define the entity, licensing, and bank-partner posture for each product once the design is settled.

- Write the policies, procedures, disclosures, and agreements each product actually needs, and get them approved by partners and regulators.

- Review marketing, product flows, and partnerships before they ship, and build the review process so it scales without you in every thread.

- Reconcile the posture across the product suite as it grows, removing duplication rather than layering on it.

Own…