Job Description

About us
Ninety One is an independent, active global asset manager with 139.7 billion of assets under management.

Established in South Africa in 1991, as Investec Asset Management, the firm started offering domestic investments in an emerging market. In 2020, almost three decades of organic growth later, the firm demerged from Investec Group and became Ninety One.


Our distinctive capabilities sit within differentiated fixed income and credit as well as specialist equities, and we have a unique perspective and approach to investment opportunities presented by emerging markets and the energy transition.


*as at 30 June 2025


At Ninety One we are committed to providing equal employment opportunities. We have a strong belief in giving individuals the freedom to be themselves and ensuring all diverse perspectives are heard. Our culture provides all of our people, no matter what their background, with the opportunity to build a rewarding career.
About the team
We are not building a conventional Private Markets platform--we are reimagining how it operates, scales, and interacts with clients in a data-driven, automation-first environment. As part of this transformation, we're hiring an experienced Legal Counsel to join our global legal team and work in direct partnership with investment, product, and technology leads to shape the legal architecture of our Private Credit and Private Infrastructure strategies.





This is a role for lawyers who want to build. You will work at the point of innovation: designing fund structures, guiding regulatory frameworks, and embedding legal precision into intelligent, scalable operating models. You'll help accelerate the platform's growth through agile execution, commercial fluency, and practical legal structuring that anticipates, not just reacts to business needs.





The Legal team at Ninety One is a globally distributed group of experienced lawyers located in London, South Africa, and the United States. The team is responsible for managing all aspects of the firm's legal affairs including fund structuring, maintenance and distribution; commercial, institutional and investment agreement negotiation; and corporate organisation and governance.





This role sits within the Private Markets vertical and will work in tight alignment with our Private Markets Product and Investment teams. It is a strategic legal seat with direct exposure to senior stakeholders, live fund launches, co-investment structuring, and transformational operational initiatives. You'll join a group that moves fast, collaborates deeply, and is trusted as a core enabler of business growth and innovation.
In this role you will:

+ Lead the legal design and structuring of new private markets funds and investment vehicles including GP/LP funds, co-investment structures, securitisation vehicles, SPVs, feeder funds, aggregators and credit instruments, with a focus on integrating sustainability and responsible investment principles where relevant. In the early stages, this role will be focused on private credit funds and strategies.
+ Draft, negotiate, and maintain core fund documentation including LPAs, PPMs, side letters, and subscription agreements.
+ Advise on multi-jurisdictional structuring across key hubs (UK, Luxembourg, Guernsey, South Africa, US, Delaware, Cayman), including putting relevant internal plumbing and governance arrangements in place, and coordinating with international and local counsel.
+ Run institutional investor negotiations (side letters, MFN processes, placement agent agreements) ensuring commercial alignment with global clients.
+ Support investment and operations teams on fund facilities, direct lending transactions, co-investments, fund-level financing, and secondary trades.
+ Act as a regulatory lead on international rules for selling private markets funds, including frameworks such as AIFMD, Securitisation Regulation, SEC exemptions, and cross-border marketing regimes including sustainability disclosure regulation.
+ Work with platform and product teams to embed legal guardrails into digitised documentation workflows, approval processes, and reporting pipelines.
+ Manage external counsel engagement, scope, budget, and execution quality across jurisdictions and projects.
You should consider applying if you have:

+ Minimum 3+ years PQE with strong exposure to private funds, alternative assets, or structured investment vehicles.
+ LLB or related tertiary legal qualification is essential
+ Mix of private practice and in-house experience preferred, ideally within asset management, infrastructure, project finance or private credit space.
+ Demonstrated experience in structuring private markets infrastructure and/or private credit fund vehicles, including GP/LP agreements, SV/SPV structures and feeder funds
+ Confidence navigating institutional investor negotiations and commercial-side discussions with sophisticated investors such as DFIs, pension funds, insurers, and SWFs.
+ Good working knowledge and familiarity with fund regimes and legal regimes in core jurisdictions (Luxembourg, UK, South Africa, Cayman, Delaware, Guernsey, US).
+ Experience supporting deal teams on primary, secondary and co-investment transactions and fund-level finance
Some of the attributes we look for in a person are:

+ Able to balance legal risk with commercial objectives in an expanding and fast-moving investment environment
+ A confident communicator who can present complex legal concepts clearly to non-lawyers and senior management
+ Comfortable working across multiple projects, time zones and countries
+ Ability to quickly build up and maintain excellent working relationships
+ Driven and intellectually curious, with a strong attention to detail
+ Comfortable in agile, cross-functional environments where priorities shift and innovation is constant.
+ Commercial, pragmatic, and solution-oriented with the judgment to balance legal risk and business delivery.What you'll be part of:



+ The design of a modern Private Markets platform; one that is natively intelligent, scalable, and built for institutional-grade outcomes.
+ A legal function that shapes business strategy, not just reacts to it.
+ A team that believes lawyers should help rewire how investment platforms operate, not sit outside of them.#LI-DNI