Lead Counsel, Data Protection

Meta seeks a highly motivated and experienced team player to serve as Lead Counsel on Meta's Data Protection team in the Product Counseling organization, with a focus on Personalization and Monetization. The role is a great opportunity for any candidate who is keen to tackle some of today's toughest and most important legal challenges in this fast evolving area of law.

As the successful candidate, you will be joining an international legal team and working at the intersection of privacy, product development, artificial intelligence, and EU digital regulation in a vibrant, fast-paced environment. In this role, you will lead on strategic and tactical legal counselling to internal legal, product, operations, and business teams in order to identify and mitigate legal risk in all phases of product development across Meta's personalization and monetization products.

Responsibilities

• Analyse products, policies and initiatives to provide practical legal risk mitigation strategies for products across multiple jurisdictions
• Monitor and respond to developments in data protection and relevant consumer laws (i.e., new laws, regulations, important judgements, regulatory guidance, etc.)
• Provide full-service support to wider legal team on EU regulatory and litigation matters and liaising with regulators
• Provide policy, legal, product, engineering, and other business teams with legal advice on data protection laws and regulations including for external communication, policy development, and enforcement decisions

Minimum qualifications

• Solicitor or barrister (qualified to practice law in at least one European jurisdiction or the UK)
• 5+ years of relevant legal experience, including at a law firm or prior in-house experience (applicable litigation, regulatory or more general product counselling experience will be considered)
• In-depth knowledge of legal issues in the area of the operation of online social media platforms including an understanding of data protection law
• Knowledge and experience in GDPR and privacy regulatory compliance, ePrivacy requirements and the broader EU digital regulatory framework, including the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Experience partnering with and influencing cross-functional teams in a highly matrixed organization
• Communication and presentation skills with proven success, specifically manages to distill complex concepts and translate insights and data into actionable recommendations for leadership
• Meta requires all employed attorneys to have a law degree or equivalent certificate to permit the practice of law and be appropriately licensed and authorized to practice law for the company in their assigned work location. Unless prohibited under local law, an attorney must hold a current practicing certificate (including where required from the relevant authority in the jurisdiction of the assigned work location) or the local law equivalent bar registration or license as may be applicable
• The role requires sound judgment, the ability to translate complex legal requirements into practical product advice, demonstrated commitment to delivering high-quality work on time, and a keen interest in understanding new technologies

Preferred qualifications

• Experience working directly with European Data Protection Authorities
• Demonstrated ongoing AI skill development (e.g., prompt/context engineering, agent orchestration) and staying current with emerging AI technologies
• Experience working with mobile, application development, social networking, online advertising, machine learning, or other Internet technologies
• Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to optimize/redesign workflows and drive measurable impact (e.g., efficiency gains, quality improvements)
• Knowledge of, or fluency in, other European languages to support engagement with regulators and stakeholders across multiple EU jurisdictions
• Experience adhering to and implementing responsible, ethical AI practices (e.g., risk assessment, bias mitigation, quality and accuracy reviews)
• Experience working independently in fast-paced environment, providing pragmatic and considered advice under tight deadlines