General Council (Fractional)

About Malted

Malted builds specialised intelligence for financial institutions. Our products combine advanced language technology with deep domain understanding to help firms make faster, more accurate and more accountable decisions.

We focus entirely on financial services, working with leading banks, insurers and regulators to turn complex reasoning into clear, dependable intelligence.

Our flagship product, Malted Pulse, provides AI that reasons transparently and can be inspected, governed and tuned to organisational policy.

We’re a small, highly technical team based in Edinburgh, combining deep machine learning experience with a rigorous approach to product design and engineering. We believe that making AI systems understandable isn’t just an ethical necessity, it’s a competitive advantage.

About the team

You’ll work closely with Malted’s founders and senior leadership team, acting as a trusted legal and commercial advisor as the company scales. This is a highly embedded role, supporting commercial activity while helping establish the legal foundations required for long-term growth in regulated and enterprise environments.

What you’ll do

As General Counsel (Fractional), you’ll own Malted’s commercial contracting and core legal needs, with a strong focus on supporting enterprise customers in banking and financial services, and navigating the legal considerations of building and deploying AI-enabled products.

You’ll partner closely with founders, senior leadership, and external council to enable growth while managing risk pragmatically. This is a hands-on role suited to a highly experienced legal professional who enjoys working inside scaling startups, moving quickly, and using modern legal and AI tooling to operate efficiently.

Responsibilities

• Lead and own commercial contracting across Malted, including customer, partner and supplier agreements

• Draft, review and negotiate enterprise contracts, with a focus on financial services customers

• Advise on legal and regulatory considerations related to AI-enabled products and data-intensive systems

• Support go-to-market activity by enabling fast, pragmatic and commercially sound deal execution

• Partner closely with founders and senior leadership as a trusted legal and commercial advisor

• Establish and maintain core legal frameworks, templates and playbooks to support scaling

• Advise on risk management, liability, IP protection and data protection matters

• Support compliance with relevant regulations and industry standards (e.g. financial services, data protection)

• Work efficiently using modern legal and AI-powered tooling to streamline contracting and legal workflows

• Manage and coordinate external counsel where needed, ensuring cost-effective use

• Help build internal legal literacy across the company through guidance and best practices

Who you are

You’re a senior legal professional with strong commercial instincts and experience operating in high-growth, regulated environments. You’re comfortable balancing risk with speed, and you enjoy being close to the business rather than operating as a distant gatekeeper. You’re pragmatic, trusted by leadership and excited by the opportunity to help shape a category-defining AI company.

Minimum requirements

• Qualified solicitor or barrister in the UK (or equivalent jurisdiction)

• 10+ years of post-qualification experience, including senior in-house legal roles

• Strong experience leading commercial contracting in enterprise and B2B contexts

• Deep familiarity with banking, financial services or regulated enterprise customers

• Experience advising technology companies, ideally in AI, data or software-heavy domains

• Strong understanding of data protection, IP and commercial risk management

• Experience partnering closely with founders and senior leadership teams

• Comfortable operating in a fractional capacity with high ownership and autonomy

• Experience using modern legal tooling, including contract automation and AI-assisted review

Preferred requirements

• Prior experience as General Counsel or Head of Legal in a scaling startup or scale-up

• Familiarity with AI governance, model risk, and emerging AI regulation

Working at Malted

We’re based in Edinburgh and work from the office three days a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday). The rest of the week is work from home. We keep a high bar for technical quality but a low tolerance for ego. You’ll join a team that values precision, humour and intellectual honesty.

Malted is an equal opportunities employer and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds.

We are not working with recruitment agencies on this role – we are keen to hear directly from candidates who are excited about what we’re building at Malted.