Sr Counsel, Product

About EarnIn

As one of the first pioneers of earned wage access, our passion at EarnIn is building products that deliver real-time financial flexibility for those with the unique needs of living paycheck to paycheck. Our community members access their earnings as they earn them, with options to spend, save, and grow their money without mandatory fees, interest rates, or credit checks.

Position Summary

As Senior Counsel, Product (Employee Ecosystem), you will play a critical role in enabling and scaling our growing suite of employee-centric products by providing strategic, practical legal guidance across product development, operations, and regulatory compliance. You will bring curiosity, creativity, and sound judgment to support the design and launch of payroll, applicant tracking, and job applicant-related products and features within a highly complex and evolving regulatory framework spanning employment law, payroll tax, payments, privacy, and financial services. You will partner closely with product, engineering, compliance, operations, and senior legal leaders to develop new payroll and job applicant-related offerings, enhance existing features, and manage regulatory risk while supporting business innovation. The legal issues you encounter will be nuanced, fast-moving, and operationally complex, requiring the ability to translate law into scalable product solutions.

The ideal candidate has substantial experience advising payroll service providers, workforce platforms, or fintechs with payroll, wage, or earned wage access components, and is comfortable working at the intersection of employment law, payments, privacy, and financial regulation. You will be a pragmatic advisor who communicates clearly with non-lawyers, separates the theoretical from the operational, and approaches problem-solving with a “yes, and” mindset—helping the business move from 0 to 1 while putting customers first and mitigating regulatory risk. This role requires managing multiple workstreams simultaneously and strong organizational skills, prioritization, and independent judgment.

This is a remote position though there is the potential to be hybrid in our Mountain View, CA office. The US base salary range for this full-time position is $190,000–$265,000, plus equity and benefits. Salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location.

What You'll Do

• Serve as a senior member of the Legal team and the lead product lawyer for payroll and job applicant-related products and features
• Advise cross-functional partners on legal and regulatory issues related to payroll servicing, from early product design through launch and ongoing operations, including:
  • Wage and hour compliance (federal, state, and local)
  • Payroll processing, pay frequency, and final pay requirements
  • Employee classification and related risk
  • Payroll tax withholding, reporting, and funds flow
  • Deductions, garnishments, and employer obligations
• Provide legal guidance on payments and money movement in the payroll context, including ACH, prefunding, settlement timing, and relationships with banks and payment processors
• Develop, share, and operationalize best practices for working with payroll vendors, payment processors, sponsor banks, and other financial partners
• Partner with product teams across the company to proactively identify regulatory risk, “look around corners,” and develop comp