Senior AI Governance Counsel

This is Adyen Adyen provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft - making us the financial technology platform of choice. At Adyen, everything we do is engineered for ambition. For our teams, we create an environment with opportunities for our people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. We are motivated individuals who tackle unique technical challenges at scale and solve them as a team. Together, we deliver innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster. The Role We are looking for a Senior AI Governance Counsel to join our Global DPO Office and help build, roll out, and operate Adyen's enterprise AI governance framework. Sitting within the group that owns our global privacy program and AI governance, and supports incident response and management as well as data governance, you will be the driving force in shaping our strong foundations into a consistent, enterprise-wide AI governance program that scales with Adyen's ambitions - helping the business innovate boldly and responsibly with AI. This is a builder role. You will translate the EU AI Act, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, GDPR, the CCPA/CPRA, and emerging global AI and privacy requirements into pragmatic policies, standards, and assessment workflows - and partner with Enterprise Risk, Security, Product, Compliance, Legal, Regulatory and Engineering to make them real. You will have a particular focus on generative and agentic AI use cases, and on giving first-line teams the parameters and tooling they need to evaluate their own models and outcomes. What You'll Do • Help build, roll out, and embed Adyen's enterprise-wide AI governance framework, policies, and standards, driving consistency as AI adoption scales across the business. • Design and operationalize AI risk and impact assessments across the AI lifecycle - from intake and risk classification through deployment, monitoring, and decommissioning - with particular focus on generative and agentic AI use cases. • Interpret the EU AI Act, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and other applicable AI laws across Adyen's global footprint, and translate them into practical policies, playbooks, and procedures for first-line teams. • Support the teams that maintain Adyen's AI inventories by defining governance parameters and requirements for cataloguing and risk-classifying AI tools and use cases. • Develop enterprise guidance and a consistent approach for evaluating AI systems, covering performance, fairness, and explainability expectations appropriate to each use case's risk profile. • Design simple, proportionate, risk-tiered processes and “green paths” that make responsible AI the easy path for fast-moving teams - using clear risk tiers and practical incentives so the compliant route is also the most convenient one. • Translate model-evaluation techniques - including fairness, bias, and adversarial (red-teaming) testing - into clear procedures that technology teams can apply to their own models and tools. • Partner with Enterprise Risk, Security, Product, Compliance, Legal, Regulatory, and Engineering to run the AI governance program and align on controls, escalation, and human-oversight protocols. • Advise on privacy considerations across the AI lifecycle, coordinating with the wider DPO Office on the interaction between AI assessments and data protection. • Design and deliver AI governance training and promote AI literacy and a culture of responsible, accountable AI use. • Monitor global AI and privacy developments and translate them into proportionate governance requirements, supporting responses to audit, regulatory, and client inquiries. Who You Are Core Expertise: • 7+ Years in AI Governance/Privacy: Proven background building, deploying, and managing global AI or privacy governance programs, ideally within regulated, multi-jurisdictional environments. • Legal / Risk Qualification: Qualified lawyer or governance professional with substantial experience in AI governance, privacy, or technology risk. (US jurisdiction admission is a plus). • Regulated Sector Background: Prior experience in payments, financial services, or other heavily regulated industries is preferred. Technical Knowledge: • AI Frameworks & Privacy Laws: Solid working knowledge of the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, and ISO/IEC 42001, along with global privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA/CPRA). • Generative & Agentic AI Experience: Familiarity with LLMs, autonomy levels, human-in-the-loop design, and tool/action permissioning. • Model Evaluation & Testing: Understanding of model evaluation techniques including fairness, bias, drift, performance, explainability, and red teaming, and the ability to translate them into practical policies. Leadership & Collaboration • Regulatory Translator: Skilled at converting complex, fast-evolving AI regulations into practical, business-aligned guidance for non-technical stakeholders. • Cross-Functional Influence: Proven ability to partner with and drive adoption across Risk, Security, Product, Compliance, Legal, and Engineering without relying on direct authority. • Execution & Ownership: Strong drafting, communication, and stakeholder-management skills paired with a proactive, builder mindset. Certifications (Preferred): • Relevant industry certifications such as IAPP AIGP, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, or CIPM are an advantage. Compensation The base salary range for this role is $210,000- $275,000. To learn more about our compensation philosophy, please click here. Location & Work Model This role is based out of our New York office. We are an office-first company and value in-person collaboration; we do not offer remote-only roles. Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion commitments Our unique approach is a product of our diverse perspectives. This diversity of backgrounds