Assistant General Counsel, Asia Commercial Legal Lead

Microsoft Corporate, External and Legal Affairs team (CELA) has an immediate opening for a highly skilled professional to lead its regional commercial legal team in Asia. This unique role, combining legal, industry and regulatory responsibilities, is based in Singapore, reporting to the Vice President and Deputy General Counsel responsible for the CELA team in Asia. The Assistant General Counsel will be a member of the CELA Asia Leadership Team and work in close partnership with the CELA team in key countries across Asia as well as the CELA Asia functional leads for Compliance, Philanthropies, and Competition Law.

The **Assistant General Counsel, Asia Commercial Legal Lead**will lead a team of senior lawyers who collectively have a mission to (a) help drive deployment, consumption and usage of Microsoft’s cloud and AI services through complex deal support and negotiations; (b) provide expertise and lead efforts to build skills and scale for effective legal support of commercial engagements for CELA Asia’s commercial legal community; and (c) drive strategic projects on behalf of the CELA Asia Leadership Team. Central to this role will be close collaboration with internal Microsoft teams in our corporate headquarters and subsidiaries, as well as key business clients across the company.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

**Responsibilities**:
**Commercial Legal**:

- Act as the lead commercial lawyer for Microsoft Asia in negotiating, drafting and project managing significant transactions and complex commercial deal. As well as have management responsibility for leading a regional team of senior attorneys covering significant transactions and complex commercial deals.

**Advocacy**:

- This role will often be called upon to be a spokesperson and contributor to external discourse on a wide range of legal and policy issues and initiatives related to Microsoft’s business across our priority industries.
- Able to proactively advance legal and policy positions through high impact external engagement in small and/or large group settings, including communications with high-level government officials, influencers and the media.
- Working with the regional legal, industry and government affairs team, he/she will also contribute to publications, blogs, and whitepapers and be a regular speaker at customer and company events.

**Management and**Collaborat**ion**:

- Lead a high-performance team, be an effective team player, dedicated to collective successes with the ability to promote cooperation and facilitate problem resolution in a timely, creative and professional manner.
- Able to influence others including outside of direct reporting relationships and in seeking and leveraging different perspectives to bring together creative and relevant solutions that drive business impact.
- Able to work cross-group in a highly matrixed headquarters organization as well as possess the tools, intuition, capability and aptitude to engage, influence and sometimes direct a diverse, dynamic and empowered field organization based around the globe.

**Qualifications**:
**Required Qualifications**:

- Juris Doctor Degree/international equivalent degree AND 9+ years experience as a practicing attorney **OR** equivalent experience.
- Active license to practice law in a jurisdiction and capable of meeting admission requirements in relevant jurisdiction.

**Preferred Qualifications**:

- 5+ years people management experience.
- 15+ years experience as an attorney in roles that involved: leading complex negotiations for technology transactions; industry experience in the context of helping understand, influence and shape the regulatory environment; engaging externally with influencers and stakeholders important to Microsoft’s success, including the legal, risk and compliance community as well as industry associations and government elite.
- Regional experience in Asia with exposure to policy and regulatory engagements in regulated industries (e.g public sector, financial services or healthcare) and familiarity with Microsoft’s cloud and AI offerings and sales channels is a plus.
- Highly developed written and oral communication skills; proven experience as an effective external spokesperson.

CELA