---
title: 'Senior Counsel, Strategic Partnerships at Column'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-counsel-strategic-partnerships-column-san-francisco-71wy4dk591qp'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Senior Counsel, Strategic Partnerships at Column

- **Company:** Column
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $210k–$300k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-06-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/column/623e1684-f3f7-4d93-80ca-45432b000b21/application

**Skills:** Contract law, Commercial transactions, BSA/AML, NACHA, Money transmission, TILA, Reg Z, Reg E, ECOA, UDAAP, FCRA, State usury laws, Licensing laws, EWA, Global money movement, Cross-border payment rails, Multi-currency wallet structures, Loan sale agreements, Participation agreements, Servicing agreements

> Own end-to-end strategic partnerships between Column and fintech partners, structuring complex banking agreements and navigating regulatory requirements. Drive product strategy, regulatory architecture, and legal operations to enable scalable financial technology solutions.

## Job description

## About Column

For companies building financial technology and transforming the financial services space, the biggest bottleneck to their growth and innovation is often the underlying banks and infrastructure stack they rely on. We have spent our careers founding and scaling companies like Plaid, Square, Meta, Blend, and Affirm, and have seen this problem firsthand — builders and developers needing to partner with traditional banks, and creating API and abstraction layers over the patchwork that is the bank, its core, and many other vendors. All of this results in a complex (and often expensive) banking supply chain involving a user, fintech, BaaS middleware provider, bank, core and the Federal Reserve.

At Column, we set out to simplify and fix this. We are a bank and a software company built from the ground up, offering builders and developers technology-forward banking solutions that cut out the hundreds of vendors, middleware providers, and abstraction layers. This means a safer, more transparent, and less costly banking supply chain. Come build with us!

The Opportunity At Column, we’re looking for a senior lawyer excited to own strategic partnerships end to end, from the first "we want to build with Column" conversation through signing, product development, launch, and ongoing expansion. Instead of handing the work off to a relationship manager or a separate product team, you're the through-line. You will architect novel partnership structures that enable fintechs to deliver modern banking experiences, navigating complex regulatory requirements along the way. You'll work closely with Go-to-Market, Engineering, Finance, Risk and Compliance and have a direct impact on how bespoke financial products are built and delivered at scale. Column’s product suite spans accounts, payments, cards, lending, and loan participations, delivered via both domestic and international fintechs to consumers and businesses.

This role offers direct access to leadership, will involve daily ongoing work with our external partners, and requires creativity and speed. The Column Legal team does not have Product, Regulatory, and Commercial silos – we believe the most effective lawyers are those who can own partnership launches and expansion end-to-end. You will have access to the best AI tools and Legal Ops support. This role reports directly to the Bank’s General Counsel.

## What You’ll Do

- Structure Bank-Fintech Partnerships: Lead the legal work to structure and launch partnerships across both payments and credit. Advise on line of credit products, bank accounts, consumer and commercial loan origination, multi-currency wallets, domestic and international card issuance, EWA and BNPL products, complex global money movement products, and more. Draft and review key customer-facing terms and marketing materials, structure onboarding flows and applications, determine BSA/AML requirements, conduct regulatory analyses, and own every legal detail of rolling out a new Column-backed product. Work closely with engineering to design a flow-of-funds model and reflect that product structure in legal documentation.
- Own complex agreements end-to-end: Structure, draft, and negotiate complex customer and third-party partnership agreements covering a broad range of banking products and services.
- Drive Product Strategy & Innovation: Be the strategic legal voice enabling product innovation. Partner closely with business teams and fintech partners from ideation through launch, anticipating challenges and architecting creative solutions that balance business needs with regulatory requirements. Advise on product structuring, and the legal implications of new lending and payments features and partnership models.
- Own Regulatory Architecture: Build and evolve regulatory frameworks for existing and new products. Leverage your deep expertise in NACHA, money transmission, BSA/AML, TILA, Reg Z, Reg E, ECOA, UDAAP, FCRA, state usury and licensing laws, the evolving EWA space, federal preemption, and true lender risk. Partner with compliance and risk teams to develop scalable approaches that protect the business while enabling growth.
- Lead Subject Matter Expertise: Be a go-to authority on legal and regulatory requirements impacting the bank’s products. Share insights on regulatory developments and their practical implications. Help establish Column as a thought leader in banking infrastructure.
- Leverage Technology & AI: Embrace and drive the adoption of technology — including AI and automation tools — to increase the efficiency, speed, and scalability of legal workflows. Identify opportunities to use AI and partner with engineering teams to build legal tooling that gives Column a structural advantage.
- Scale Operations: Design and implement legal processes that can scale with hypergrowth. Improve partner onboarding efficiency while maintaining robust compliance. Build repeatable frameworks that enable the business to move faster. Develop template program agreements and disclosure packages that accelerate new partnership launches.

## What We’re Looking For

- Currently licensed in a U.S. state, J.D. or equivalent, with 7–15+ years as a practicing lawyer; priority given to candidates with both law firm experience and in-house experience at a fintech and/or a financial institution.
- Deep expertise counseling product teams on banking infrastructure and embedded finance solutions, with particular depth in consumer and/or commercial banking.
- Ability to independently draft and negotiate complex commercial agreements, with a strong understanding of both contract law and commercial transactions
- Comprehensive knowledge of the regulatory framework governing banking partnerships and fintech services.
- Deep working knowledge of the regulatory and compliance requirements impacting Column’s payments, card, and lending products.
- Experience structuring agreements and advising on bank-fintech lending partnerships.
- Familiarity with loan sale, participation, and servicing agreements
- Familiarity with complex cross-border money movement, global payment rails, and multi-currency wallet structures.
- Proven ability to manage a high volume, cross-functional workload without sacrificing quality or speed
- A strong desire to work at the center of fintech/bank innovation, coupled with comfort and experience making fast, sound, and supported risk decisions, especially where the legal landscape isn’t black and white.

Pay transparency Compensation packages at Column include base salary, equity, and benefits. New hire offers are made based on a candidate's experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers. The annual base salary range for this position is $210,000 - $300,000 + equity.

What you’ll get from us:

- 🏥 Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans, including options that are 100% covered by Column for you and 100% covered for your dependents!
- 👶 Comprehensive family planning and fertility benefits via partnership with Carrot, including reimbursement of up to $20,000 in qualified expenses
- 💳 FSA and HSA account options to enable use of pre-tax money for medical and dependent care expenses
- 📈 401k plan, including self-directed brokerage options
- 🌴 Flexible time-off policy - take the time off that you want and need to relax and recharge
- 👶 100% paid parental leave, including 16 weeks for birth mothers, 12 weeks for primary caregivers, and 8 weeks for secondary caregivers
- 🍽️ Catered lunches and dinners for SF employees
- 🚆 Commuter benefits
- 🎉 Regular team building events, including annual offsite

We look forward to hearing from you Column is committed to working with the best and brightest people from the broadest talent pool possible. We value bringing together a team with different perspectives, educational backgrounds, and life experiences, and believe a diversity of ideas is what allows us to develop the best solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation during the application and recruiting process, please reach out to accommodations@column.com.

We participate in the E-Verify program in certain locations as required by law. Learn more about the E-Verify program [here](https://e-verify.gov).

## About Column

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Column is a nationally chartered bank built from the ground up to provide API-first banking infrastructure for developers and financial institutions, enabling them to build, move, and lend money at scale.
- **Entity Type**: Private (founder-owned, profitable, bootstrapped)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021 (launched in 2022)
- **Founders**: William Hockey (CEO, co-founder of Plaid)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) / Financial infrastructure
- Target customers: Technology companies, US banks, international banks, real estate firms – primarily B2B and developer-facing
- Mission statement: To be the new backbone of financial services – a bank that is also a software company, purpose-built to power financial products for the next hundred years.

## Products & Services
- **Bank Accounts**: Programmable checking, savings, trust, subledger, clearing, and sweep accounts. Supports one or millions of account numbers per account, disposable accounts, all FDIC-insured.
- **Payments**: Direct connections to the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House (RTP), Swift, and card networks. Supports ACH, wire, real-time payments, book transfers, and checks.
- **Card Programs**: Full-stack card issuing (debit, credit, unsecured, charge, secured). Customers can bring their own balance sheet or use Column’s.
- **Lending**: Credit origination, warehouse lines, forward flow facilities, and loan purchase programs – all API-accessible.
- **Debt Financing**: Infrastructure to fund new financial products at scale.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed (100% founder and employee owned, profitable)
- **Key Metric**: Processes over **$4.5 trillion** in annual transaction volume (source: column.com)
- **Key Metric**: 136 employees as of mid-2025, with **+35.9% year-over-year headcount growth** (linkedin.com)
- **Notable Customers/Partners**: Mercury uses Column; direct connections to Federal Reserve, The Clearing House, Swift; No. 1 issuer of real-time payments in the US.
- **Growth Signals**: Profitable from early stage; global expansion into MENA region (hiring Emerging Markets Lead in Dubai); launching new banking products; strong uptime (99.999%).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Built from scratch**: No middleware or legacy software – Column built its own core, ledger, and data model.
- **Direct infrastructure**: Owns dedicated hardware connecting to Federal Reserve, TCH, and Swift, giving customers granular control and eliminating vendor bloat.
- **API-first design**: Every banking product (accounts, payments, cards, lending) is programmable via APIs.
- **Scale and reliability**: 99.999% uptime (highest of any bank), handles hundreds of billions monthly.
- **Founder-led and independent**: Profitable, employee-owned, and not beholden to external investors – allows long-term product focus.

## Strategic Focus
- **Global expansion**: Entering new geographic markets (MENA, Europe) with dedicated leads and local partnerships.
- **Product depth**: Scaling lending, card programs, and real-time payments; building risk analytics infrastructure to support growth safely.
- **Developer experience**: Continuing to invest in API tooling, documentation, and developer relations to attract more fintech and enterprise builders.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as "a bit weird" – not a standard tech or finance company. Emphasis on deep work, async interviews, minimal meetings, and high autonomy.
- **Team size**: Small and intentional (136 people, plans to stay lean). High impact per person – employees own core systems from day one.
- **Work model**: Mostly local in San Francisco Bay Area; open to remote for exceptional candidates. Some roles require travel (e.g., Strategic Partnerships).
- **Perks**: Employee-owned and profitable; focus on employee experience (fewer distractions, more building time); "We have fun" (column.com/company).
- **Hiring process**: Includes async take-home assessments to respect candidate time; emphasizes speed and expertise over lengthy interviews.

## Sources
1. [column.com](https://column.com/)
2. [column.com/company](https://column.com/company)
3. [column.com/careers](https://column.com/careers/)
4. [linkedin.com/company/column-bank](https://www.linkedin.com/company/column-bank)
5. [cbinsights.com/company/column](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/column)

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