Senior Legal Counsel

Devoted Studios is a globally remote game development company specializing in Co-development, Porting, and End-to-End Art Production for the global gaming industry. With a distributed team we collaborate across time zones to support projects on all major platforms, engines and styles - from AAA titles to emerging technologies.

Our team includes world-class talents who bring deep expertise in external development, pipeline optimization, and creative problem-solving. Whether it’s porting games to new systems, enhancing gameplay features, or crafting stunning visuals, Devoted Studios operates as a trusted, flexible extension of our partners’ internal teams.

We are proud to be the development partner of choice for industry leaders such as:

• 2K
• Xbox
• Meta
• Obsidian Entertainment
• Turtle Rock Studios
• Gearbox Software

At Devoted Studios, we’re committed to making outsourcing more efficient, collaborative, and impactful. If you're passionate about co-development, game art, or solving technical challenges on a global scale.

We are seeking a Senior Legal Counsel to act as the lead in-house lawyer and to lead the company’s corporate, compliance, and legal operations function during a period of international growth and increasing organizational complexity.

This is a high-accountability legal leadership role for a medium-sized global business. It combines core corporate and business law work with legal operations, strategic structuring, risk management, transaction support, and disciplined management of external legal, tax, audit, and compliance advisors.

This is not intended to be a one-person global legal department or a one-size-fits-all technical specialist role. We are looking for a lawyer with strong knowledge of corporate and business law, combined with the ability to own outcomes across more complex or specialized matters by selecting, briefing, coordinating, and project-managing outside experts effectively. Where the matter falls within the successful candidate’s own expertise, they will act directly as subject-matter expert. Where specialized local or technical expertise is required, they will remain accountable for the result through structured delegation and oversight.

The role is highly integrated with Finance and executive leadership. A major part of the mandate is to support global growth, ensure legal and tax compliance, and to reduce legal, financial, and operational risks arising from contract management, credit and customer risk assessment, legal workflow design, and international structuring. 

The role also supports the company’s long-term transaction readiness for future financing, strategic acquisition, or public-market preparation.

• Partner with the CFO to design and maintain the group’s target legal structure and the legal components of its global tax and operating model.
• Advise on the creation and maintenance of subsidiaries, sub-holdings, intercompany relationships, legal forms, and jurisdictions of incorporation.
• Help design a scalable, tax-efficient, and operationally coherent legal structure, in coordination with external specialists where needed.
• Maintain legal structure maps, governance records, and internal documentation supporting the group’s legal and structuring model.
• Co-develop and maintain a comprehensive legal and tax compliance calendar across jurisdictions.
• Research and monitor cross-border legal, corporate, and compliance obligations and ensure they are assigned, tracked, and completed on time.
• Support Finance in working with external auditors, tax advisors, and service providers on structure-related and compliance-sensitive matters.
• Coordinate the legal implementation of intercompany frameworks and legal arrangements reflecting allocation of functions, assets, and risks across the group.

• Coordinate the legal and documentary foundation needed for strong global tax compliance, including intercompany agreements and primary supporting documentation such as SOWs, invoices, and certificates of acceptance.
• Manage and coordinate external advisors involved in transfer pricing, direct tax, indirect tax, payroll-related compliance, and statutory reporting matters.
• Support the internal accounting team and Financial Controller in obtaining external legal and tax advice where required.
• Help ensure that group entities are supported with appropriate compliance coverage across corporate income tax, sales tax, GST/HST/VAT, state nexus matters, and other relevant legal and tax obligations.
• Monitor legislative and regulatory changes in the US, Canada, and relevant European jurisdictions, assess business impact, and advise the CFO on required actions.
• Support Finance and external specialists on tax-sensitive legal workstreams involving CFC-related frameworks, transfer pricing, intercompany arrangements, and related documentation.
• Coordinate shareholder-related legal and compliance matters where required.

• Conduct periodic internal legal risk reviews across material areas of the business, especially customer contracts, commercial commitments, approvals, and cross-functional execution risks.
• Partner with the CFO to design practical risk mitigation measures, policies, and internal protocols.
• Co-design and maintain customer scoring, legal risk assessment, and payment-term governance frameworks, including credit-risk-related legal controls.
• Own the design of legal processes and workflows in Jira or comparable workflow systems, covering contract review, drafting, approval, execution, compliance, renewal, amendment, and termination.
• Design and maintain approval matrices, escalation logic, and legal handoff processes across legal, finance, sales, and production.
• Develop simplified contract forms for tests and lower-value sales orders where commercially appropriate.
• Review and improve standard contract templates, including customer agreements, vendor and contractor agreements, intercompany service agreements, cost-sharing agreements, financing agreements, and related supporting documents.
• Establish and maintain clear internal guidance on obligatory, acceptable, and unacceptable contractual terms.

• Source, engage, and manage external providers for legal, tax, audit, compliance, and other specialist work.
• Manage entity formation and legal onboarding processes for new jurisdictions and legal entities.
• Support legal aspects of opening bank and investment accounts, KYC/AML requests, financial institution onboarding, and signatory / authority documentation.
• Maintain capitalization tables, equity contribution documentation, and core corporate legal records.
• Prepare or coordinate intercompany agreements, financing agreements, and other internal corporate documents as required.
• Ensure outsourced legal work is scoped properly, delivered on time, integrated into the business, and translated into practical internal actions.

• Partner with the CFO on structuring strategic transactions, including acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, earn-outs, reorganizations, and other strategic corporate actions.
• Lead the internal legal workstream for buy-side and sell-side transactions, including diligence coordination, red-flag reporting, issue tracking, and document execution readiness.
• Draft, review, and negotiate key transaction documents in coordination with external counsel where appropriate, including term sheets, purchase agreements, shareholder agreements, disclosure schedules, transition arrangements, and post-closing obligations.
• Support equity and debt financing workstreams, including review and negotiation of financing documents and related corporate approvals.
• Act as a lead internal negotiator with counterpart counsel and external transaction advisors on matters within the role’s scope.

• Co-lead review and negotiation of customer contracts, with particular focus on higher-risk provisions such as indemnities, limitation of liability, IP ownership, payment terms, data protection, export control, and governing law.
• Ensure material commercial changes are documented properly and reflected in amended agreements and downstream internal workflows.
• Coordinate closely with Business Development, Production, Finance, and leadership to reduce contract leakage, undocumented concessions, and execution risk.
• Support customer disputes, settlement discussions, and other pre-litigation matters in coordination with external counsel where needed.

You are a senior, business-oriented corporate lawyer with strong legal research skills, strong drafting and negotiation capability, sound judgment, and high ownership. You are effective both as an expert in your core legal domain and as a disciplined manager of external specialists when the matter requires expertise outside your own core area.

You can work comfortably with finance leadership, translate legal issues into business implications, and drive cross-functional execution without losing control of detail.

You know how to build legal workflows and scalable operating discipline. 

• • Master’s degree in law.
  • Qualification as a lawyer in a Canadian common-law jurisdiction is strongly preferred, but not required
  • 5 years of relevant experience, ideally combining strong corporate law firm training with meaningful in-house exposure.
  • Strong knowledge of corporate law, global legal structuring, and contract law. Basic knowledge of tax law is strongly preferred.
  • Strong experience drafting, reviewing, and negotiating commercial agreements and internal corporate legal documentation.
  • Management experience, either through direct team leadership or management of outside counsel.
  • Proven ability to manage complex cross-functional matters involving Finance and external advisors - strongly preferred
  • Experience designing or improving legal processes, approval workflows, templates, and internal legal controls - strongly preferred.
  • Excellent spoken and written English, with the ability to lead meetings, negotiate clearly, and draft high-quality legal documentation for North American stakeholders.
  • Current residence in Canada and legal authorization to work in Canada.
  • Reliable ability to attend a GTA office / co-working location up to two times per week when requested.

What Success Looks Like:

• scalable and tax efficient global legal structure is designed and implemented;
• tight control over multi-jurisdiction legal, corporate, and tax-related compliance;
• disciplined management of external legal, tax, audit, and compliance advisors across jurisdictions;
• complete, audit-ready intercompany agreements, contracts, and primary documentation;
• clean integration of legal workflows with finance and strategic leadership
• and a legal function that materially improves structure, compliance, control, and transaction readiness across the business.

Why Join Us?

We offer:

• Strong and enthusiastic team – you will have the opportunity for knowledge sharing, learning, and professional self-development.
• Direct collaboration with the Finance Director.
• Interesting and challenging tasks – solve diverse and challenging issues of a growing organization.
• Convenient working conditions – remote work and flexible hours
• А chance to work in a highly professional and dynamic team working in an International Game Production company, attractive remuneration package, and opportunities to develop professionally.

This is a remote, full-time contractor position

We are an equal opportunity company and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for a contract without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.