Senior Legal Counsel - Employment Law

This is Adyen

Adyen provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft - making us the financial technology platform of choice. At Adyen, everything we do is engineered for ambition.

For our teams, we create an environment with opportunities for our people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. We are motivated individuals who tackle unique technical challenges at scale and solve them as a team. Together, we deliver innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster.

About the job

As our Senior Legal Counsel - Employment Law in Amsterdam, you'll be instrumental in both shaping and executing Adyen's global employment law strategy. Embedding yourself within the People team, you will act as a hands-on expert providing critical legal advice and partnering closely across the organization to ensure all our employment practices are compliant, scalable, and fully supportive of our ambitious growth and high performance culture.

You'll be responsible for driving global employment law & contracts, developing policies & compliance, delivering training & upskilling initiatives to the People team, and leading scaling & insights to foster data-driven decision-making. This pivotal role also involves close collaboration with a small, cross-regional team of employment law experts, and you'll liaise with the broader Legal team for alignment on cross-functional matters and our Legal Control Framework.

What you'll do

• Develop and execute a global employment law strategy that aligns with Adyen's rapid growth and global way of working.
• Provide comprehensive, actionable, consistent, and business-focused legal advice to senior leadership on a wide range of global employment law issues.
• Advise on the full employee lifecycle (recruitment, onboarding, offer letters, contracts, background checks, non-compete/non-solicitation clauses, restrictive covenants, separation agreements, terminations and post-employment obligations), ensuring global consistency and local compliance.
• Lead and advise on complex global and local employee relations issues, including investigations, disciplinary actions, grievances, performance management, whistleblowing, and workplace conduct.
• Proactively scale Adyen’s global employment law approach, setting strategy and providing data insights for data-driven decisions.
• Advise on equity structures and incentive plans in partnership with the HR and Rewards team.
• Develop and conduct training for HR and management on employment law trends and compliance best practices.

What you bring

• You are an attorney with at least 10+ years of corporate legal experience, with a preference for experience as an in-house corporate counsel at a (publicly listed) company in an international setting.
• You are specialized in Dutch labour law with a proven track record of advising on, or coordinating advice across, multiple international jurisdictions and can develop strategies that scale globally.
• You have experience advising senior leadership and Board-level stakeholders on strategic employment law matters.
• You have experience engaging with Dutch Works Councils.
• You possess a solid business acumen and can balance legal risk mitigation against key business objectives and people strategy. You are adept at quickly understanding HR challenges and translating them into practical, compliant legal solutions.
• You are comfortable with ambiguity, flexible to change, and have a continuous learning mindset, eager to deepen your knowledge of Adyen's business, technology, and the dynamic global employment law landscape.
• You have excellent analytical, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• You have the ability to structure and prioritize in a high volume, fast-paced, complex environment.
• You can work independently as well as collaboratively, gathering appropriate input and making clear, well-reasoned decisions.
• You are available to work from our Amsterdam office and travel to other offices periodically.
• You are fluent in English and Dutch, both written and spoken.

This role is based out of our Amsterdam office. We are an office-first company and value in-person collaboration; we do not offer remote-only roles and for this role we are specifically looking for Dutch labor law experience.