Senior Legal and Commercial Counsel

Company Intro

Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) is the world's leading provider of online travel and related services, provided to consumers and local partners in more than 220 countries and territories through five primary consumer-facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable. The mission of Booking Holdings is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. For more information, visit BookingHoldings.com and follow us on X (formerly known as Twitter) @BookingHoldings.

Booking Holdings Financial Services (hereinafter “BHFS”) provides financial services in the form of payment services and e-money products across all the brands. BHFS is committed to conducting its business in compliance with applicable laws, regulations and guidelines, with integrity and to the highest ethical standards

Job Summary

BHFS is looking for an experienced lawyer to join our Legal Team as Senior Commercial Legal Counsel, reporting to Legal Director. The successful candidate will advise on a range of commercial and technology contracts related to our expanding payments and financial services activities, act as a critical partner and trusted advisor to our business and help to develop our commercial contracts infrastructure and strategy. This is a great opportunity for a collaborative, agile and creative lawyer to help develop, launch, and enable our mission to deliver a world-class payments operation to support our global brands. This role is based in London, UK.

The selected candidate will have the chance to witness first-hand the investment in digital technology that helps take the friction out of travel, and paying for travel. As you do so, you will advise on a range of legal questions related to our commercial strategy, demonstrating your familiarity with global financial services, regulatory contexts and the industry commercial considerations that enable payment services at this scale, and define the future of the company. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Review, draft and negotiate a variety of strategic commercial contracts, including complex partnerships with PSPs and compliance vendors, outsourcing relationships and other technology and vendor contracting across BHFS. 

• Provide legal expertise and legal and industry best practice across a range of legal matters, including contract and commercial law, outsourcing, licensing and IP.

• Apply a solutions oriented approach to commercial negotiations and adapt to changes in the business environment.

• Collaborate and build relationships with legal, procurement and business teams across BHFS and Booking Holdings, ensuring our agreements align with strategic objectives and fostering positive working relationships.

• Communicate effectively, both in written and verbal forms, to convey legal concepts to non-legal stakeholders and external parties in a simple, direct and easy to understand manner

• Assist in building a best-in-class commercial contracting capability by developing tools, templates and procedures and working with stakeholders to ensure an efficient commercial contracting process.

• Provide training to other legal and business teams across Booking Holdings in relation to commercial law, outsourcing and procurement management. 

• Developing and delivering training to educate colleagues on legal and regulatory requirements related to our contracts.  

• Support the regulatory legal team on ad hoc projects.

Knowledge and Skills: 

• 8+ years relevant post qualification experience. 

• Relevant post-qualification experience (in-house or private practice) and strong technical knowledge of commercial contracts, including complex partnerships with PSPs and compliance vendors, outsourcing relationships and other technology and vendor contracting. 

• Experience advising on these types of agreements in the financial services industry context would be a significant advantage. 

• Relevant post-qualification experience (in-house or private practice) and strong technical knowledge of legal and industry best practice across a range of legal matters, including contract and commercial law, outsourcing, licensing and IP.

• Knowledge of and demonstrable experience of working in a financial services regulatory environment, including exposure to the EBA outsourcing regime.

• Ability to meet complex challenges with innovative solutions that will apply successfully across multiple practice areas and jurisdictions.

• Very strong organizational and project management skills. Capable of handling multiple projects/initiatives simultaneously and executing to completion.

• A natural problem-solver and strategic thinker, comfortable with ambiguity and able to bring structure to challenging situations and maintain orderly records.

• Strong communication skills and ability to explain complex issues in an easy-to-understand manner.

• A natural at building consensus and working with multiple stakeholders to drive solutions.

• Demonstrable ability to meet deliverables on time in a dynamic and evolving environment.

• Collaborative and team-oriented approach, capable of working in a distributed workforce across all levels of the organisation.

• Experience with or knowledge of payments services regulation and the payments services partnerships ecosystem is a plus.

• Self-starter capable of building out and implementing processes to drive efficiency.

Booking Holdings Financial Services International Ltd. is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are committed to treating all employees equally, regardless of gender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, religious belief, age, disability, race or membership of the traveler community. We believe embracing equality and diversity in the workplace benefits not just our organisation but also individual employees, departments and our customers.

This policy extends to every phase of the employment process including, but not limited to, recruitment, selection, placement, transfer, training and development, position elimination, restructure, promotion, compensation, benefits, layoffs, termination, and all other conditions or privileges of employment. Booking Holdings Financial Services International Ltd is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.