Associate General Counsel, Employee Relations (Remote, United States)

Company Description

About Shopify
Opportunity is not evenly distributed. Shopify puts independence within reach for anyone with a dream to start a business. Since 2006, we’ve grown to over 10,000 employees and generated over $500 billion in sales for millions of merchants in 175 countries. Every 28 seconds, an entrepreneur on Shopify makes their first sale.

This is life-defining work that directly impacts people’s lives as much as it transforms your own. This is putting the power of the few in the hands of the many, is a future with more voices rather than fewer, and is creating more choices instead of an elite option.

About you
Moving at our pace brings a lot of change, complexity, and ambiguity—and a little bit of chaos. Shopifolk thrive on that and are comfortable being uncomfortable. That means Shopify is not the right place for everyone.

Before you apply, consider if you can:

• Care deeply about what you do and about making commerce better for everyone
• Excel by seeking professional and personal hypergrowth
• Keep up with an unrelenting pace (the week, not the quarter)
• Be resilient and resourceful in face of ambiguity and thrive on (rather than endure) change
• Bring critical thought and opinion — and embrace differences and disagreement to get shit done and move forward

Job Description

We’re looking for an Associate General Counsel with extensive employment and labour law experience to join our Employment Legal Team.

About the team

Shopify’s Employment Legal Team focuses on the issues that affect Shopify as a global, remote-first employer. We have employment lawyers working to ensure that Shopify remains a trusted employer that can strike a balance between compliance with legal requirements, and maintaining our amazing, mission-driven work environment. We also have digital community moderators who focus on ensuring that our internal employee communications channels are safe spaces where mission-aligned dialogue takes place. Our moderators collaborate with teams across Shopify to build and moderate the digital community guidelines that help Shopifolk stay focused on our mission of making commerce better for everyone.

With thousands of employees spread across the globe, there is never a dull moment on this team. Shopify marches to the beat of its own drum, and we’re faced with nuanced and exciting issues you couldn’t dream up if you tried!

Role description

As AGC, Employee Relations, you will wear several hats. You will act as a strategic legal advisor on workplace investigations and other sensitive employee/labour relations matters, and help us build and scale internal projects. You will also lead and champion the mandate of the Internal Community Team and build a scalable moderation system that supports a globally distributed workforce. While the digital community moderators will own the day-to-day business of internal moderation, you will focus on influencing and building the policies, practices, and systems that support this work. 

You must be able to juggle competing priorities, be ready to pivot at a moment’s notice, and maintain a high level of composure when managing high pressure situations. Effective, confident communication skills, and the ability to provide user-friendly advice are paramount to success in this role. You will also need to leverage a combination of your existing knowledge and great instincts to extrapolate into new areas of law, new geographies, and areas of ambiguity. You will be part of a lean, dynamic team and ready to jump in to help wherever it is needed - even if there is no clear answer, you are unfamiliar with the issues, and you’ll need to learn as you go. 
 
Success on the Shopify Legal Team requires intellect, humility and a sense of humour. You need to take the work seriously, but not take yourself too seriously. You also need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and be ready to navigate uncharted waters, differing opinions, and frequent change. 

Responsibilities

• Help build, implement, and sustain a data-informed, proactive employee relations/labour relations approach in collaboration with the Talent Team and senior leaders
• Work on cross-functional projects as the employment and labour law and/or community moderation expert 
• Support colleagues on the Employment Legal Team on any areas of high volume/new projects as needed 
• Build and scale a sustainable internal community moderation system that operates globally
• Define baseline metrics for moderation and measure the impact of strategies and initiatives
• Lead the team moderating our internal communication channels, both synchronous and asynchronous, to help Shopifolk focus on our mission
• Collaborate wit