General Counsel

The opportunity

Kamino is hiring its first General Counsel to lead legal and compliance globally, build the U.S. operating foundation, and hire the legal and compliance team over the next 6–12 months.

Kamino is expanding in the United States and building a team in New York to lead this next phase. We are looking for a General Counsel who will own Kamino's global legal and compliance function and turn that ambition into an executable operating model.

As General Counsel, you will be accountable for legal and compliance matters across the globe. Your immediate focus will be establishing Kamino's U.S. operating foundation, while setting the global legal strategy and overseeing regulatory matters outside the U.S.

This is a build-with-product role, not a pure sign-off function. Working directly with the CEO and leaders across product, engineering, business development and operations, you will shape institutional products and partnerships from inception and turn regulatory sophistication into a commercial advantage. Within your first 6–12 months, you will begin building the legal and compliance team that will scale with Kamino.

What you'll do

Global legal and compliance leadership

• Serve as Kamino's chief legal officer and principal legal adviser to the CEO, leadership team and the Foundation.
• Own the global legal and compliance function across all Kamino entities and jurisdictions, including corporate, commercial, regulatory, intellectual property, employment, privacy and disputes.
• Set Kamino's global regulatory strategy, coordinating U.S. work with frameworks such as MiCA and with other key markets.
• Establish and oversee Kamino's global compliance program, including AML, sanctions, risk assessment, policies and monitoring.
• Manage legal risk, disputes and any regulatory inquiries or investigations worldwide.
• Own the legal and compliance budget, and select and manage external counsel and regulatory advisers across jurisdictions.

Building the legal and compliance team

• Design the target structure of Kamino's legal and compliance organization, aligned to the company's product, geographic and institutional roadmap.
• Begin hiring within the first 6–12 months, prioritizing the roles Kamino needs most (for example, compliance, product and regulatory counsel, and commercial counsel).
• Recruit, develop and lead a high-performing team, and set the standards, tools and ways of working the function operates by.
• Decide what to build in-house and what to keep with external counsel as Kamino scales.

U.S. legal architecture and governance

• Design Kamino's U.S. legal and regulatory operating model, including entity roles, legal posture and the approval process for new products.
• Partner with executive leadership to develop and refine the U.S. roadmap in line with Kamino's overall strategy, with legal and regulatory considerations built into planning from the outset.
• Advise where Kamino should operate as infrastructure, where third parties must assume regulated or managerial responsibilities, and what Kamino should deliberately avoid.

Product roadmap and institutional strategy

• Embed with product and engineering on lending markets, vaults, leverage products, points and rewards programs, token launches, tokenized real-world assets and other new capabilities.
• Translate regulatory risk into concrete product design choices before products are built, rather than layering legal review on after decisions have been made.
• Create repeatable legal and diligence processes for onboarding asset managers, curators, distribution platforms and supporting service providers.
• Lead or support negotiations involving integrations, institutional pilots, data, technology, custody, servicing, tokenization, credit and liquidity.

Securities, commodities and regulatory analysis

• Apply the Howey and Reves tests, related case law and CFTC jurisdictional principles to evaluate whether tokens, yield products or trading features could be characterized as securities or commodity derivatives under U.S. law.
• Track and interpret federal legislation, SEC and CFTC rulemaking and guidance, state frameworks, and executive or agency policy affecting DeFi, staking, stablecoins, custody and tokenized assets, alongside major developments in other jurisdictions.
• Assess money-transmitter licensing, BitLicense->

Regulatory engagement, compliance and policy

• Represent Kamino in proactive and responsive interactions with the SEC, CFTC, FinCEN, OFAC, relevant state regulators and, where relevant, non-U.S. regulators.
• Advise on Bank Secrecy Act obligations, FinCEN guidance, OFAC sanctions screening and Travel Rule implications for non-custodial infrastructure and any centralized touchpoints.
• Contribute to industry advocacy and help shape Kamino's comments on proposed rules through appropriate trade associations and policy organizations.
• Build regulatory literacy across product, engineering and go-to-market teams so that sound judgment is applied without legal reviewing every routine decision.
• Maintain legal memoranda, risk assessments, policies and decision logs for product launches.

What success looks like

Building the global legal and compliance foundation

Within the first six months

• Make Kamino operational in the United States for its approved initial scope within 90 days, including the ability to employ its team, maintain its New York presence, enter contracts and advance approved business development and pilot activity.
• Establish clear boundaries, decision rights and escalation processes.
• Complete the licensing and registration analysis for Kamino's planned U.S. activities and establish the roadmap for any required approvals.
• Map Kamino's legal and compliance obligations in its other key jurisdictions and put oversight and external counsel coverage in place.
• Put the initial compliance, contracting, governance and documentation framework in place.
• Produce executable legal pathways for Kamino's highest-priority institutional pilots and partnerships.
• Agree a legal and compliance team plan and hiring priorities with the CEO, and begin recruiting for the first roles.

By the end of the first year

• Make the first legal and compliance hires and have the core team operating.
• Expand the initial U.S. structure into a scalable operating model capable of supporting institutional products and partnerships.
• Establish repeatable legal processes for asset-manager onboarding, distribution integrations and institutional product launches.
• Enable Kamino's priority institutional pilots to proceed with clear approvals, responsibilities and risk boundaries.
• Implement practical global governance and compliance systems that protect Kamino without slowing product development.
• Build a trusted network of external counsel, regulatory advisers and industry relationships across Kamino's key jurisdictions.
• Set the longer-term roadmap for Kamino's global legal and compliance organization.

Why this role matters

The infrastructure decisions being made today will shape how institutions participate in onchain markets for years. Kamino has already built a proven credit and liquidity engine. The next challenge is to create the legal and operating framework, starting in the U.S., that allows that technology to serve asset managers, distribution platforms and financial institutions at scale.

As Kamino's first General Counsel, you will sit at the intersection of law, product and company building. You