Booking Holdings Romania - Senior Legal Counsel (Regulatory)

Booking Holdings Romania is a Center of Excellence based in Bucharest, Romania and was created to support the increasing business demands of the Booking Holdings Brands. The Center of Excellence provides access to specialized and highly skilled talent, leading industry best practices, and collaboration opportunities across all of our Brands.

As part of our Booking Holdings Romania team, you will have the opportunity to be a part of the world's leading provider of online travel, with a mission of making it easier for everyone to experience the world through five-primary consumer facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable.

Role description

Booking Holdings Romania is looking for a Senior Legal Counsel to support the Global Booking Holdings Legal team. The role is based in our Center of Excellence (COE) in Bucharest, Romania, which is a key enabler of Booking Holdings' global talent strategy for several technology functions such as Cybersecurity, Fraud monitoring/analytics, IT, Legal, Finance, Procurement etc. across our many Brand subsidiaries.

This role will assist the Global Legal Team as well as the Brand Legal teams in monitoring legal and regulatory areas, including on substantive topics such as intellectual property, consumer law, artificial intelligence, employment law, sustainability, and accessibility. This person will help develop policies and procedures that will have a global impact on our international family of brands, and will help with risk mitigation and dispute resolution as it arises. This is a senior legal role that will provide the right candidate with amazing opportunities to work with a global team on cutting edge legal issues.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

• Draft, implement and manage key policies, procedures, and controls (including those related to artificial intelligence, IP, sustainability, consumer law, employment law, etc) to ensure they are robust, consistent with relevant legal and regulatory requirements and industry best practices, and easy to access, read, and understand.
• Take responsibility for Booking Holdings Government Demands Log and process to ensure relevant stakeholders in Legal, Compliance & Privacy and elsewhere are aware of new global government demands and inquiries.
• Assist in dispute management for large and complex matters as they arise.
• Monitor the regulatory and enforcement landscapes on cutting edge legal issues, identify applicable regulatory requirements, and advise management and stakeholders of the corresponding impact on the company's operational activities. Collaborate with outside counsel as appropriate.
• Manage and oversee the Company's Legal Standards program, which includes an annual self assessment of the Company's major brands in key legal areas.
• Build out the disputes preparedness program for the cross-brand family of companies, including by developing and implementing playbooks and templates related to disputes processes and guidelines. Manage the issuance, scope and release of legal holds for the cross-brand family of companies.
• Take a leading role in relation to document retention and production, providing strategic input and support, and work with the eDiscovery team on processes and best practices.
• Devise training in relation to key disputes concepts, including legal professional/ attorney-client privilege
• Build strong and effective relationships with other departments across BHI and our brands to ensure the effective implementation of our policies, procedures, and standards across the enterprise.

Role Qualifications and Requirements

• Bachelor degree
• Specialized Diploma
• 5 - 8 years relevant job knowledge

Legal and Regulatory Skills

• At least six years of experience as a qualified lawyer, with substantial experience in disputes and regulatory work.
• Experience with ESI (electronically stored information) management and disclosure/discovery in the course of disputes.
• Expertise in developing regulatory and compliance frameworks, including drafting policies and procedures.
• Expertise in drafting comprehensive legal memos to multiple level stakeholders; ability to interpret different legislative documents and provide clear summary to non-legal stakeholders.
• Strong organizational and project management skills, including the ability to work across cultures and timezones on pressing legal issues.

Communication & Organizational Skills

• Extremely high proficiency in English; Ability to communicate directly and clearly in English.
• Ability to formulate and articulate a perspective and present it in a manner that generates understanding and alignment.
• Excellent organizational and project management skills
• Ability to work well with colleagues around the world and manage both time-sensitive and long-term projects.
• Self-awareness of communication style and cultural differences.

Other Skills

• Self-starter, strong internal motivation to succeed, assertive, and extreme attention to detail.
• Ability to exhibit a high standard of innovation and execution to solve ambiguous problems that require tough prioritization.
• Superior problem-solving skills, leadership qualities, ability to influence, communications, consulting, and team/interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively with others from any functional area, background, or location to influence thinking, and gain acceptance.
• Capable of operating independently with limited oversight. Strong sense of personal accountability.
• Comfort dealing with ambiguity and a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment

Benefits & Perks

• Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide
• Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture
• Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation
• Competitive compensation and benefits package
• Vast amounts of data to validate your ideas and the opportunity to experiment with real users

Booking Holdings is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.

Pre-Employment Screening:

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.