Product Counsel, EMEA

🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot!

Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. Whether it's trading cards, fashion, electronics, or live plants, our sellers are building real businesses across hundreds of categories. We're building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West, and there's no playbook to copy. The people here are shaping how an entirely new industry develops.

As a remote co-located team, we're inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia. We move fast, stay close to our users, and focus on the work that drives the most impact.

We're one of the fastest growing marketplaces and were recently named the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our news and engineering blogs and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.

💻 Role

As Whatnot deepens its European footprint and expands into new global markets, we need a senior legal partner who sits at the intersection of product law, privacy, and international regulation. This is a high-impact role embedded in a fast-moving product environment.

You will serve as the dedicated legal resource for Whatnot’s international product roadmap — coordinating with regional and subject matter expert legal teams to consolidate and globalise legal feedback, ensuring products and features are built compliantly from day one. As Whatnot scales globally, you will build the product legal infrastructure that makes that growth possible without creating bottlenecks.

🎯 Global Product Counselling

• Provide day-to-day product legal support for Whatnot’s international product roadmap, advising product and engineering teams from concept through post-launch on legal risk across the UK, EU, and new markets.

• Lead global review of new products, product features, and product-related matters to ensure compliance with applicable digital, consumer protection, and platform regulation — before features ship.

• Advise on the DSA, UK Online Safety Act, GDPR/UK GDPR, e-commerce rules, consumer protection frameworks, platform liability regimes, and emerging AI-related legal obligations.

• Coordinate with regional counsel and subject matter expert legal teams to consolidate and globalise legal feedback to product teams, ensuring a coherent global legal posture across markets.

• Support the development of Whatnot’s international terms of service, community policies, and seller frameworks.

• Build scalable legal playbooks, review processes, and self-serve tools that let the product team move fast with confidence.

🔒 Privacy & Data Protection

• Serve as product privacy counsel for Whatnot’s international markets, advising on privacy-by-design principles and data protection obligations throughout the product development lifecycle.

• Review new products and features for GDPR, UK GDPR, and ePrivacy compliance, including legal basis analysis, transparency obligations, data subject rights, and DPIAs.

• Monitor and respond to regulatory developments in data protection law across the EU, UK, and key growth markets, briefing cross-functional stakeholders on practical impact.

• Partner closely with Whatnot’s privacy counsel to ensure a coordinated approach to international privacy compliance across product initiatives.

• Draft and maintain internal and external privacy policies, notices, and standards relevant to Whatnot’s international product and seller ecosystem.

🌍 Regulatory Monitoring & Market Expansion

• Actively monitor global regulatory developments — including the EU AI Act, DSA, DMA, and emerging frameworks in key growth markets — and advise the business on practical implications for the product roadmap.

• Serve as the primary legal resource for international market entry workstreams, coordinating with local counsel where required and maintaining a coherent global legal posture.

• Engage with regulators and support regulatory responses in connection with new product features and international initiatives, working in close collaboration with policy and government relations teams.

• Partner with trust and safety, employment, and privacy counsel to ensure a coordinated approach to international compliance across the legal function.

• Contribute to the team’s OKRs and legal ops initiatives, helping the product legal function scale through process, tooling, and documentation.

We offer flexibility to work from home or from one of our global office hubs, and we value in-person time for planning, problem-solving, and connection. Team members in this role must live within commuting distance of our London or Dublin hubs.

👋 You

People who do well at Whatnot tend to be comfortable figuring things out as they go, biased toward action, and genuinely curious about what they’re building. They care more about outcomes than credit and stay close to the product and the people using it.

As our next International Product Counsel, you should have 8+ years of legal experience, plus:

• Qualified to practice law in the US, UK, or an EU jurisdiction, with experience directly advising on product and technology legal matters (in-house experience preferred). Based in Dublin or London

• Significant in-house product counsel experience at a high-growth technology company, startup, or marketplace — you have been in the room when products are built, not just called in after the fact.

• Deep familiarity with UK and EU digital regulation: DSA, GDPR/UK GDPR, e-commerce rules, consumer protection frameworks, platform liability regimes, and the EU AI Act.

• Demonstrated ability to lead global review of new products and features, coordinating across legal and business teams to consolidate feedback and drive compliance across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously.

• Proven track record translating complex regulatory requirements into practical, actionable guidance for non-legal teams — you give clear answers, not hedge-everything memos.

• Strong privacy and data protection experience, including hands-on work with GDPR, UK GDPR, ePrivacy, and DPIAs in the context of consumer-facing product features.

• Sound business judgment and a “how do we get this done” orientation. You assess risk against business goals and make confident, informed calls.

• Comfort operating with autonomy on a lean team in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment. You are scrappy and no job is too small.

Nice to Have

• Experience at a high-growth startup or scale-up that has expanded internationally, particularly into European markets.

• Background in marketplace, fintech, live commerce, or consumer platform legal work.

• Experience interfacing with EU or UK regulators and data protection authorities in connection with product matters.

• Prior in-house experience within an international, matrixed organisation with demonstrated ability to navigate complex stakeholder environments.

• Exposure to AI product legal issues, EU AI Act implementation, and generative AI governance.

• Familiarity with payments regulation or financial promotions in the context of consumer product features.

💰 Compensation

For UK/Ireland-based applicants: Competitive base salary + benefits + equity.

The salary range may be inclusive of several levels that would be applicable to the position. Final salary will be based on a number of factors including level, relevant prior experience, skills and expertise. This range is only inclusive of base salary, not benefits (more details below) or equity.

🎁 Benefits

• Generous Holiday and Time off Policy

• Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision

• Work From Home Support

  • Home office setup allowance

  • Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet

• Care benefits

  • Monthly allowance for wellness

  • Annual allowance towards Childcare

  • Lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses

• Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally

• Monthly allowance to dogfood the app

  • All Whatnauts are expected to develop a deep understanding of our product. We're passionate about building the best user experience, and all employees are expected to use Whatnot as both a buyer and a seller as part of their job (our dogfooding budget makes this fun and easy!).

• Parental Leave

  • 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work *company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence.

💛 EOE

Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, parental status, disability status, or any other status protected by local law. We believe that our work is better and our company culture is improved when we encourage, support, and respect the different skills and experiences represented within our workforce.