Networks for Humanity (NFH) — Building the Financial Internet

Location: Singapore or United States (preferred)

Employment type: Full-time

Reports to: Director, Policy & Programs (and dotted line to the global leadership of NFH-affiliated entities)

About NFH and Finternet Labs

Networks for Humanity (NFH) is an international non-profit initiative advancing open, programmable, decentralised and trusted digital public infrastructure for the global economy. Its flagship initiative, Finternet Labs, is building the Financial Internet — programmable money, tokenized credit, multi-asset wallets, cross-border rails, and AI-native financial systems — alongside regulators, financial institutions and technology partners across India, Singapore, the United States, Switzerland, Bermuda and other jurisdictions. NFH operates through a multi-entity structure: a Swiss anchor (foundation/association), a US tax-exempt entity, a Singapore company limited by guarantee, and operating subsidiaries that engage in regulated and licensed activities, including tokenization, payments and financial services.

The Role

The Global General Counsel will lead legal, regulatory and compliance operations for NFH worldwide. This is a senior, systems-level role: you will own the legal architecture of a multi-jurisdiction non-profit group with regulated operating subsidiaries, set the compliance posture across tax-exempt and for-profit entities, and partner with leadership on regulatory strategy in jurisdictions where the rules of the road are still being written.

You will be the principal legal officer for the group, working with external counsel in each jurisdiction, designing and operating the contract function, and translating the operating model — public-interest mission, regulated subsidiaries, AI-enabled workflows — into defensible legal structure.

This is not a contract-processing role. It is a build role. You will inherit a multi-entity group, a live tokenization regulatory engagement, and an active set of partnerships, and you will be expected to take legal operations from a single-counsel function to a scalable, technology-enabled global legal team.

What you will own

Group entity architecture and governance

• Maintain and evolve the global group structure across Switzerland, the United States, Singapore, India and other jurisdictions, including the relationship between the controlling tax-exempt entity, sister non-profits, and operating subsidiaries.

• Advise the Board, Global Leadership Council and senior management on fiduciary duties, conflicts management, related-party arrangements, and governance documentation (bye-laws, charters, delegation of authority, RACI).

• Oversee entity housekeeping: incorporations, dissolutions, foreign branch registrations, statutory secretarial work, and director/officer appointments across all jurisdictions.

Tax-exempt organisation reporting and compliance

• Own the global tax-exempt compliance calendar: IRS Form 990 / 990-PF (and Schedule F where foreign activities are reported), Singapore Charities Act and IPC obligations, Swiss cantonal tax-exempt confirmations, and equivalent obligations in other jurisdictions.

• Manage public-charity vs. private-foundation positioning, public support testing, UBTI/UBIT exposure, intermediate-sanctions risk, and conflict-of-interest policy.

• Structure cross-border grantmaking, equivalency determinations, expenditure responsibility, and FCRA-equivalent inbound/outbound funding compliance.

• Ensure FATCA/CRS classifications and filings are correct across all group entities and accounts.

Regulated and licensed business activities

• Lead licensing strategy and ongoing regulatory engagement across financial-services and adjacent perimeters: MAS (Singapore), RBI/SEBI/IFSCA (India), state and federal regulators (US), BMA (Bermuda), and other relevant authorities as the footprint expands.

• Advise operating entities on regulated activities including tokenization, payments, custody, fund administration, advisory, and infrastructure-as-a-service for financial institutions.

• Define and maintain AML/CFT, sanctions, KYC and travel-rule programs across the group; oversee the relationship with compliance officers and MLROs in regulated subsidiaries.

• Engage proactively with regulators on supervised experimentation, sandboxes and policy consultations; lead the legal workstreams of NFH's regulatory engagements (including the live India tokenization pathway and BMA tokenization framework).

Fintech, tokenization and digital assets

• Provide subject-matter leadership on tokenized assets (credit, gold, vouchers, stablecoin-linked instruments, real-world assets), securities-law characterisation, custody and trust structures, and cross-border distribution.

• Stand up the legal scaffolding for new product launches: SPV factories, issuer vehicles, distribution arrangements, secondary-market design, on-chain/off-chain enforceability.

• Advise on AI-initiated financial actions, agent-mediated transactions, and the liability and governance implications of programmable infrastructure.

Contract management — SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, and beyond

• Own end-to-end contracting for the group: SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, MSAs, DPAs, BAAs, IP licences and assignments, partnerships, MoUs, grants, advisory and consulting, vendor and procurement, board and donor documentation, employment and consulting agreements.

• Build and operate the CLM stack: templates, playbooks, intake, triage, approval matrices, e-signature, repository hygiene, and obligations and renewals tracking — leveraging AI contract review and document-management tools.

• Negotiate infrastructure-grade agreements with banks, card networks, technology vendors, governments, multilateral institutions and philanthropic funders.

Data protection, IP and information governance

• Maintain the group's data-protection program across GDPR, Singapore PDPA, India DPDPA, US state privacy regimes and sectoral rules; oversee cross-border data transfers and sub-processor governance.

• Protect IP and protocol integrity, including open-source licensing posture (e.g., LF Decentralized Trust contributions), trademark portfolio, and trade-secret hygiene.

Risk, crisis and dispute management

• Build the enterprise risk register and the group's response framework for regulatory inquiries, enforcement actions, contract disputes, and reputational incidents.

• Manage external counsel selection, scope, budget and quality across jurisdictions; bring panel discipline and clear value-for-money.

Legal operations and team building

• Operate, in the near term, as a high-leverage single-person function supported by external counsel; in the medium term, hire and lead a small in-house team across jurisdictions.

• Set the legal-ops baseline: KPIs, SLAs, intake, reporting to leadership, and integration with finance, programs, partnerships and engineering.

Required qualifications (non-negotiable)

• A law degree and an active practising licence (bar admission) in the United States, Singapore, or both. Both is strongly preferred. One of the two is the floor.

• A minimum of 10 years post-qualification experience, with 15–20 years preferred. At least part of that experience must include senior in-house responsibility (Deputy GC, Head of Legal, or equivalent) at a regulated financial institution, fintech, payments network, exchange, asset manager, or comparable infrastructure company.

• Demonstrable experience leading group entity structuring and governance across multiple jurisdictions, including cross-border tax-exempt or hybrid for-profit/non-profit structures.

• Working command of tax-exempt organisation reporting and compliance in at least one of the US (501(c)(3)/Form 990), Singapore (Charities Act, IPC), or Switzerland (foundation/association tax exemption), and the ability to oversee equivalents in the others through external counsel.

• Substantive expertise in fintech and regulated financial-services law: securities, banking, payments, fund formation, custody, AML/CFT, and at least one of tokenization, digital assets, or programmable infrastructure.

• End-to-end contract management experience covering SaaS, IaaS and PaaS arrangements as both customer and vendor, including data-protection addenda, IP and security schedules.

• Fluency with AI-enabled legal tooling — contract review, document management, knowledge bases — and a clear point of view on how to use it responsibly to scale a small legal function.

• Direct regulator engagement experience (written submissions, in-person meetings, supervisory dialogue) in at least two jurisdictions.

• Excellent written and verbal English. Polished, restrained, proposition-led drafting. Comfort presenting to boards, regulators and external partners.

Strongly preferred

• Experience advising or operating within a Swiss foundation or association, a US 501(c)(3) public charity or private foundation, or a Singapore company limited by guarantee with charity/IPC status.

• Tier-1 law-firm training in financial regulation, capital markets, funds, or technology transactions.

• Experience with FATCA/CRS, FCPA, UK Bribery Act, OFAC and equivalent sanctions regimes.

• Familiarity with operating-company structures that sit beneath a tax-exempt parent, including IP and services arrangements, transfer pricing posture, and unrelated-business-income management.

• Exposure to multilateral and government-facing engagements (World Bank, BIS, central banks, finance ministries, monetary authorities).

• Experience hiring, mentoring and leading a small in-house legal team and managing a global external-counsel panel.

What "world-class" looks like in this seat

• You think in legal systems, not clauses. You design structures that survive political transitions and scale with the business.

• You are equally credible explaining a Series LLC to a Delaware lawyer, a VCC to MAS, and a tokenized credit instrument to a finance ministry.

• You hold the line on integrity and independence, and you do so without slowing the organisation down.

• You anticipate regulatory shifts before they land, and you brief the CEO and Board with calibrated, decision-ready memos rather than long-form caveats.

• You manage your own crises. You do not panic under regulatory scrutiny; you build defensible architecture in advance.

• You are tech-fluent. You use AI to multiply your output and you can explain to engineers, regulators and donors why a given control sits where it sits.

Compensation & Benefits

Market-aligned compensation package (base salary plus performance-based incentives) or a pro-rated retainer for engagement, complemented by mission-linked OSS upside, health benefits, and business-class travel.

Why Join Finternet

• Work with the creators of India’s most trusted digital infrastructure, the people behind UPI and Aadhaar.

• Help build global public financial infrastructure capable of serving billions of people.

• Collaborate with leading engineers, researchers, and policymakers across fintech, cryptography, and distributed systems.

• Contribute to open-source infrastructure with real-world national-scale impact.

• Join a mission-driven organization building the financial rails of the future.