Legal & Compliance - sole hire, build with AI
Kovo · United States
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 the existing posture and keep shrinking it
Keep our current legal and compliance operations running at the standard partners already expect from us.
Find what else can be codified, automated, or retired, and do it.
Run litigation defense, dispute resolution, complaints, exams, and audits with limited cross-functional support.
Own bank and partner compliance relationships, privacy, and BSA/AML/KYC and fraud policy.
Run the function on agents
Build and maintain agentic workflows for research, drafting, policy maintenance, monitoring, and reconciliation, so the operating side of the function needs less of you every quarter.
Hold the quality bar on everything those workflows produce. Critical thinking and judgment never get delegated, and quality must be above reproach, without exception.
Make your own recurring work redundant. Measure yourself by how much of the operating side runs without you.
Engage outside counsel only where something undeniably requires it and cannot be worked agentically. Scope the work tightly and own the relationship.
Communicate
Give founders, engineering, product, marketing, and customer experience clear, fast, written answers they can act on.
Represent Kovo with banks, partners, regulators, and auditors.
About you
Mindset
Minimal footprint is how you think, not a policy you follow. You get satisfaction from the license you didn't need, the policy you retired, and the process that now runs itself.
You want to be the function, not lead one. The idea of building legal and compliance for a multi-product company yourself is why you'd take this job.
Comfortable in a high-intensity role with full ownership and accountability. Willing to move quickly, prioritize well, and follow through under tight timelines.
Judgment is the job. You know the difference between what an agent can draft and what only you can sign off on, and you never confuse the two.
Energized by expanding financial access for millions of underserved people.
How you work
Extremely organized with an uncommon attention to detail. Nothing falls through the cracks.
Clear, concise writer. People understand your answer on the first read.
You'd rather delete a step than document it.
Technically proficient. You're comfortable reading code and data, pulling your own numbers, and building workflows with AI tools rather than waiting for someone to build them for you.
Hate AI slop. You use agents heavily and hold their output to a higher standard than your own first draft.
Experience
JD and active bar admission in a US state.
Prior legal or compliance role at a fintech startup, ideally a fast-growing one. The posture at a slow-growing startup looks very different from the one you'd build here.
Mid-career: enough reps to have taken a regulated consumer product through its full lifecycle, and still hungry to build the function yourself.
Strong preference for a multidisciplinary background: you've worked in a business, engineering, or product function before or alongside your legal work.
Hands-on with the consumer finance stack: FCRA and credit reporting, UDAAP, TILA/Reg Z, ECOA, EFTA/Reg E, state lending and money-transmission licensing, bank partnership programs, and BSA/AML/KYC.
You can point to a product or program you shaped to need less, not more: a design choice that avoided a license, a program you consolidated, a process you automated away.
Experience managing outside counsel and regulator or bank-partner relationships directly.
#LI-Remote