Location: Berlin Reporting to: Chief Financial Officer
Purpose of Position
The Group Legal Director oversees all legal matters (except for employment law), particularly corporate, litigation and transactional matters for the company and its group companies.
Ideally based at the headquarters in Berlin, the job holder will serve as a trusted business partner to the leadership team, providing proactive, pragmatic and commercially minded legal advice that enables the business to move at pace, while protecting the company and its Executive Board from material risks.
The role reports directly to the CFO and is a member of the CFO's senior leadership team.
Being a fully authorized lawyer (bar examination) is required, ideally in Germany (Volljurist, i.e. 1st and 2nd state exam).
Key Tasks
- Provide the Executive Board, CFO, and management team with professional and strategic legal advice on all aspects of the business, consistently striking the right balance between enabling commercial success and safeguarding the company from significant legal and regulatory risk. The ability to offer clear, pragmatic recommendations rather than purely defensive legal positions is essential.
- Handle and identify cross-jurisdictional complex legal and regulatory matters, especially in Commercial, Corporate, Internet, Data Privacy, Competition, Trademark, Civil and M&A law.
- Act as a commercially aware sparring partner to senior stakeholders across the business, understanding their objectives and finding workable legal solutions that support (rather than obstruct) growth.
- Management and coordination of internal and external legal projects.
- Prepare, update and implement corporate legal operations, policies and procedures.
- Work with colleagues around the globe and across business functions to ensure delivery of consistent, strategic, risk-weighted, and business-focused legal advice.
- Support all departments of the company, especially Sales (National / International), in the negotiation and drafting of agreements as well as all legal matters and enquiries raised.
- Draft, review and negotiate a range of legal documents (including NDAs, letters of intent, commercial agreements, data privacy agreements, service and project agreements, etc.) as well as legal opinions and decision memos.
- Lead on Corporate Governance, Compliance and Risk Assessment, ensuring the Board has clear visibility of material risks and appropriate mitigations — without creating unnecessary friction in day-to-day business operations.
- Track and monitor laws and regulations relevant to the company's business.
- Manage the legal department team and budget, including outside counsel relationships, and evaluate results.
Skills & Expertise
Essential Skills
- 7+ years of professional experience as a Legal Counsel, ideally gained as in-house counsel within an international company and in a leadership role.
- Fully authorised German lawyer (Volljurist, i.e. 1st and 2nd state exam successfully completed) would be a significant plus; an equivalent qualification from a different jurisdiction also acceptable.
- Leadership: experience leading a Legal team/department, incl. hiring, developing, mentoring, and managing performance (with HR support).
- Strong commercial acumen: the ability to understand business drivers, assess risk proportionately and translate legal complexity into clear, actionable guidance for non-legal stakeholders is a core requirement of this role — not a nice-to-have.
- Excellent stakeholder management: confident and credible at Board and C-suite level, with the interpersonal skills to build trust across functions and geographies, and to influence without authority.
- A pragmatic, solution-oriented mindset — able to identify the path through a legal challenge rather than simply cataloguing the risks.
- Professional working proficiency in English.
- Outstanding legal and business judgment, drafting, negotiation, and analytical skills.
- Excellent written and oral communication skills, with the ability to convey legal issues clearly to non-legal colleagues.
- Experience in coordinating teams across projects and working practices, strong leadership and empowerment to support your team
- Flexible, with the ability to cope under pressure and manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
- Collaborative team player with a proactive, can-do attitude.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and SharePoint.
Desirable Skills
- Significant in-house experience, ideally within a technology, e-commerce or digital marketing environment.
- Interest, knowledge and experience in online marketing and the affiliate/performance marketing industry.
- Additional languages are a plus but not required.
Our Offer
- Flexi-Week and Work-Life Balance: We prioritise your mental health and well-being, offering you a flexible four-day Flexi-Week at full pay and with no reduction to your annual holiday allowance. We also offer a variety of different paid special leaves as well as volunteer days.
- Pension: Awin offers access to an additional pension insurance to all employees in Germany.
- Flexi-Office: We offer an international culture and flexibility through our Flexi-Office and hybrid/remote work possibilities to work across Awin regions
- Development: We’ve built our extensive training suite Awin Academy to cover a wide range of skills that nurture you professionally and personally, with trainings conveniently packaged together to support your overall development.
- Appreciation: Thank and reward colleagues by sending them a voucher through our peer-to-peer program
Established in 2000, Awin is proud of our dynamic, social and inclusive culture.
Like all businesses, we’ve had to adapt and nurture our culture in a virtual environment. Our virtual ‘Life @ Awin’ hub brings our colleagues from across the globe together for various social activities.
Diversity & Inclusion are paramount to us, and we proudly pursue and hire diverse team members. We champion uniqueness and authenticity; this is who we are at our core. Our network of affiliate partnerships are diverse and transparent, as are the employees powering our vision to build the world’s leading open partner ecosystem. We welcome all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. If you need support at any point in the application or interview process, please let us know.
Awin is part of the Axel Springer group. Learn more at axelspringer.com/en/, and explore the Axel Springer Essentials here: axelspriger.com/en/inside/the-essentials-what-we-have-adapted-and-why