Lead Legal Operations Manager

We believe that the way people interact with their finances will drastically improve in the next few years. We’re dedicated to empowering this transformation by building the tools and experiences that thousands of developers use to create their own products. Plaid powers the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life. We work with thousands of companies like Venmo, SoFi, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks to make it easy for people to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they want to use. Plaid’s network covers 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Washington D.C., London and Amsterdam. We’re looking for an experienced Legal Operations Lead to scale and run the systems, processes, tools, and budget that power Plaid’s legal and compliance team. Reporting to the Head of Commercial Legal, you’ll own the legal and compliance team’s technology strategy and roadmap, the team’s budget and outside counsel spend, vendor management, data and reporting, and other high-impact cross-functional initiatives that move the team forward. You’ll also have the opportunity to continue developing one Commercial Legal focused Legal Operations team member, who is responsible for day-to-day contracting operations. As Plaid keeps growing, our legal systems, operations, and budget discipline are going to matter more and more, and you’ll be at the center of shaping how that looks. You’re a proactive and creative problem-solver who spots process gaps before others see them and builds scalable fixes. You’ve owned a legal budget and outside counsel spend, managed legal vendors, and led legal tech decisions. You’ve done the hands-on commercial contracting work earlier in your career (Ironclad, AI contract tools, the whole stack), and you know it well enough to guide someone else through it. At this point, you’re just as excited about setting strategy, growing a teammate, and operating at the program level as you are about running day-to-day workflows yourself. You’re a clear, empathetic communicator who can cut through complexity, bring people along through change, and build credible partnerships across the org. And you bring data to the table when you diagnose problems, set priorities, and measure impact. If you thrive in a fast-paced environment, love turning messy operational problems into clean, scalable solutions, and get energy from helping a legal and compliance team do its best work, we’d love to talk to you! Responsibilities: - Legal Technology & AI Strategy. Set the strategy, governance, and roadmap for the legal and compliance team’s tech stack, with a real focus on how AI changes the way Legal works. Take what we’ve already built with tools like Claude for Legal and Harvey and drive us into the next phase: deeper integration into day-to-day workflows; broader rollout to more use cases (contracting, research, knowledge management, intake, drafting); and measurable productivity gains. Sharpen our point of view on where AI delivers the most leverage, set the guardrails and quality bar for how the team uses these tools, partner closely with Business Operations on Plaid-wide end-to-end integrations, and make sure our tech investments are actually paying off. - Legal Budget & Outside Counsel Spend. Own the legal and compliance team’s budget, including legal billing operations and outside counsel spend. Build and enforce outside counsel billing guidelines in Brightflag, partner with Finance on forecasting and accruals, and continue to bring real discipline to how we manage legal spend. - Data, Metrics & Reporting. Build dashboards and tracking that give us real visibility into legal and compliance team performance, contracting throughput, and spend. Use the data to surface trends and risks, drive continuous improvement, and partner with the Head of Commercial Legal on