Interim Legal Counsel (Employment Law)

Duration of Contract: 3-6 months contract, 24h-32h/week

About Nearfield Instruments

Nearfield Instruments is a fast-growing high-tech company that develops advanced semiconductor metrology solutions for leading chip manufacturers and research institutes worldwide. As our organization continues to scale internationally, we are looking for an experienced legal professional to strengthen our employment law and HR legal support capabilities.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Interim Legal Counsel with a strong background in employment law and in-house legal advisory work. This role will focus on supporting HR and business leaders with complex employment-related legal matters across multiple jurisdictions, while building scalable processes, frameworks, and guidance that enable HR to manage routine legal questions more independently.

This assignment is ideal for a pragmatic and business-oriented legal professional who enjoys combining expert legal advice with process improvement and organizational enablement.

Key Responsibilities

• Advise HR, management, and business leaders on employment law and people-related legal matters across the Netherlands and other countries where Nearfield Instruments operates.

• Review, draft, and negotiate employment-related documentation, including:

• Employment contracts and contract amendments

• Non-compete, non-solicitation, and confidentiality agreements

• Intellectual property and invention assignment provisions

• HR policies and employee handbooks

• Dismissals across multiple jurisdictions

• Provide legal guidance on employee relations matters, performance management, organizational changes, and workforce-related initiatives.

• Assess legal risks and provide practical, commercially balanced recommendations.

• Develop and implement legal guidelines, templates, decision frameworks, and standard processes for HR-related legal matters.

• Create practical playbooks and training materials that help HR teams address common legal questions consistently and compliantly.

• Define clear escalation paths for higher-risk legal matters requiring specialist review.

• Support the development of globally consistent employment practices while ensuring compliance with local legislation.

• Coordinate and manage external legal counsel where country-specific expertise is required.

What Success Looks Like

By the end of the assignment, HR will have access to clear processes, templates, guidance materials, and decision frameworks that enable the team to resolve routine employment law-related questions independently, while ensuring appropriate escalation of higher-risk legal matters.

What We're Looking For

• Master's degree in Dutch Law or equivalent legal qualification.

• Significant experience as an in-house Employment Counsel and employment lawyer.

• Deep expertise in Dutch employment law, with experience supporting international organizations.

• Strong experience drafting and advising on restrictive covenants, including non-compete and non-solicitation agreements.

• Experience supporting HR teams on complex employment matters and organizational change.

• Demonstrated success in building legal processes, governance frameworks, toolkits, and self-service models for HR organizations.

• Experience coordinating external counsel across multiple jurisdictions.

• Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to work effectively across HR, management, and executive teams.

• Pragmatic, hands-on, and able to operate independently in a fast-paced, growing organization.

• Fluent in English; Dutch is highly preferred.

Why Join This Assignment?

This is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact in a rapidly growing deep-tech organization. Beyond providing legal expertise, you will help create sustainable processes and ways of working that will support Nearfield Instruments' continued growth.

What can you expect from us?

• A supportive team environment where colleagues help one another. TEAM stands for Together Everyone Achieves More;

• A challenging role where you can make a visible impact while fully utilizing your professional expertise.

Apply for the job

If the above challenges excites you, we encourage you to send us your details using the Apply now button on our career site.

Recruitment, consultancy and/or other agency?

We appreciate the interest, but we source all our candidates directly. We understand that you as an intermediary want to present candidates to our interesting positions. This is not how we have structured our recruitment.

This means that all profiles offered to Nearfield Instruments will be treated as direct applications. Unless we have explicitly agreed otherwise.