Associate General Counsel, Employee Relations (Remote, Americas)

We're looking for an Associate General Counsel with extensive employment and labour law experience to join our Employment Legal Team.

About the team

Shopify's Employment Legal Team focuses on legal issues that affect Shopify as a global employer. Our core goal is to ensure that Shopify remains a trusted employer that can strike a balance between compliance with legal requirements and maintaining our amazing, mission-driven work environment.

With thousands of employees spread across the globe, we can guarantee that there will never be a dull moment. Shopify marches to the beat of its own drum, and you'll be faced with nuanced and exciting issues you couldn't dream up if you tried. Working with other members of our Legal team and providing support to our global Talent team, you'll apply your knowledge and experience to new scenarios while skillfully providing business-oriented advice in an efficient, succinct, and easy-to-understand way. No legal memos or law school lectures here!

Real talk: being a member of a fast-moving team that's doing cutting edge legal work is not always easy. We find fulfillment by practicing at the top of our games with our amazing team and coming up with creative solutions to complex problems!

Role description

As AGC, Employee Relations, you will act as a strategic advisor on workplace investigations and other sensitive employee/labour relations matters, and help us build and scale internal projects. You must be able to juggle competing priorities, directly manage high pressure situations, and explain nuanced legal concepts to non-lawyers in a concise, easy to understand way. Effective, confident communication skills, and the ability to provide user-friendly advice are paramount to the success of this role. You will also need to leverage a combination of your existing knowledge and great instincts to extrapolate into new areas of law, new geographies, and areas of ambiguity.

Success on the Shopify legal team requires intellect, humility and a sense of humour. You need to take the work seriously, but not take yourself too seriously. You also need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and be ready to navigate uncharted waters, differing opinions, and frequent change.

Responsibilities

• Helping to build, implement, and sustain a data-informed, proactive employee relations/labour relations approach in collaboration with the Talent team and senior leaders


• Working on cross-functional projects as the employment and labour law expert


• Advising on workplace investigations, employee grievances, policy development, and complex terminations


• Collaborating closely with our community moderation team and Talent to resolve violations of our community rules and guidelines, and working with senior leaders for critical issues


• Leaning in to support colleagues on the Employment Legal Team on any areas of high volume/new projects as needed


• Taking a leading role on improving knowledge management and systems building within the Talent and Legal teams

Qualifications

• A J.D. or LL.B


• 5-10 years of experience advising in all aspects of employment law, with a focus on employee and labour relations issues, having honed your skills as a practicing employment lawyer at a law firm and, ideally, in-house


• A license to practice law in any Canadian province or U.S. state - note, you do not need to live in a major urban centre! For Shopify, home is where the Internet is


• You like being part of a lean and dynamic team, and are willing to jump in to help whenever needed - even if there is no clear answer, you are unfamiliar with the issues, and you'll need to learn on the job.


• Experience working on high priority programs with executive level stakeholders that are sensitive in nature. Discretion is a must.


• Strong writing skills, with the ability to match your tone to your audience and write plainly and concisely


• You like going deep into a specific problem, building solutions, and measuring results


• The ability to be a self-starter who thrives without regular oversight


• Comfort navigating and making decisions at speed in the midst of ambiguity and frequent change


• Interest in building and managing a cross-jurisdictional team and learning about employment law in new jurisdictions


• A strong desire to understand Shopify as a business and its workplace culture

Bonus if you have:

• Experience with employment law in multiple jurisdictions


• Experience working on an employee or labour relations team


• Experience working in tech and/or start-up environments

We know that applying to a new role takes a lot of work and we truly value your time. Allison Di Cesare, Associate General Counsel, is looking forward to reading your application.

In your cover letter, please tell us about an interesting case you've read about, and what you think it might mean for Shopify. Please limit your answer to a few paragraphs, at maximum.

Please submit your application materials in PDF format.

Closing date: Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 11:59 PM ET. Successful candidates can expect to hear back from us by Friday, January 27, 2023.