Legal Counsel

About the Company

Hello Group Inc. (NASDAQ: MOMO) is a social and dating technology company. Our Singapore Regional Headquarters supports a team of approximately 50 people and serves as the base for the group's international operations across Asia and the Middle East. We are looking for a Legal Counsel to own the legal function for the region — a high-ownership role for someone who can set the legal agenda and run it hands-on, with minimal day-to-day oversight.

About the Role

This is a solo legal function reporting directly to the Regional Director, with real visibility to regional leadership rather than a seat several layers down in a large legal department. You will be the first point of contact for legal questions arising from the group's international operations, working closely with Hello Group's Beijing legal team.

We are a Nasdaq-listed company, but our Singapore office runs like a start-up. We operate deliberately lean, scopes are not rigidly bounded, and everyone carries a share of the operational load. The person who succeeds here will move comfortably in both directions on the same day — advising the leadership team on a cross-border market entry in the morning, then turning around an NDA or chasing a statutory filing with our corporate secretary in the afternoon — and will treat neither as beneath them.

We also expect this person to work with modern AI tools to automate and compress the routine parts of the job. A great deal of contract review, legal research and document management is now automatable, and we would rather hire someone who reclaims that time for higher-value work than someone who absorbs it manually.

Hybrid working: 3 days in office, 2 days from home.

Responsibilities

Commercial & Contracts

• Draft, review and negotiate the full range of commercial agreements — vendor, procurement, technology, licensing, partnership, marketing, leasing and intercompany
• Advise and train business teams on contractual risk, commercial disputes and intellectual property licensing
• Build and maintain contract templates and approval workflows for regional operations
• Support M&A, investment, restructuring and market entry initiatives as required

Privacy, Regulatory & Governance

• Lead the legal review of new products and features for privacy and data protection compliance, working with product, engineering and data security teams
• Advise regional leadership on legal, regulatory and consumer protection risk, and develop the company policies and controls that follow from it
• Monitor developments in privacy, online safety, digital platform regulation and AI across the group's markets, and flag what requires action
• Oversee corporate secretarial and entity governance across the group's international entities, coordinating external providers and local counsel

Cross-Border & Business Support

• Work with Hello Group's Beijing legal team on multi-jurisdictional legal assessments
• Conduct periodic compliance reviews across the group's markets, and manage external counsel where local or specialist advice is required
• Advise on employment matters, manage commercial disputes, and support KYC and regulatory submissions

Qualifications

• Qualified to practise law and in good standing in Singapore, the UK, the US, another common law jurisdiction or an EU member state. Candidates holding an equivalent qualification with strong cross-border commercial contract experience will also be considered
• At least 3 years of post-qualification experience, with meaningful experience in commercial law and cross-border contracts
• Experience advising across multiple jurisdictions, ideally including Southeast Asia and/or the Middle East, together with exposure to corporate secretarial or entity governance matters
• In-house experience in a multinational technology, internet or consumer digital business is strongly preferred; exposure to privacy, data protection or digital platform regulation is highly advantageous
• Strong commercial judgement, with the ability to translate complex legal issues into clear, practical recommendations for business teams
• Comfortable operating independently as a sole counsel while collaborating across functions, countries and time zones; experience in a start-up or lean-team environment is an advantage
• Demonstrated use of AI tools to automate or streamline contract review, legal research or legal operations
• Business-level Mandarin, required for working directly with Beijing HQ counterparts