Head of Legal

What you’ll own

Contracts and deal flow (daily work)

• Run intake, drafting, review, negotiation support, signature, and filing for NDAs, vendor agreements, consulting agreements, partnership/pilot agreements, MSAs/SOWs, and basic data/security addenda.
• Maintain templates and “fallback positions” that match our risk tolerance.
• Keep deals moving by driving timelines, nudging reviewers, and making decisions about what to escalate.

Government / defense contracting support (with escalation paths)

• Coordinate reviews of government and prime/sub agreements (and flowdowns) with outside counsel as needed.
• Track key contract obligations and deliverables (reporting requirements, security requirements, data handling, publication restrictions).
• Help internal teams understand “what we signed up for” in plain English.

IP and information hygiene (process, not solo heroics)

• Maintain invention assignment and contractor IP paperwork; keep clean records.
• Coordinate with outside counsel on patent filings or trademark basics if/when needed.
• Partner with engineering on lightweight open-source software hygiene (tracking, approvals, basic notices).

People-related agreements and basics

• Own offer letter / contractor agreement workflows, confidentiality + invention assignment, and separation paperwork coordination with counsel.
• Keep an organized approach to sensitive issues (routing to counsel, documenting, protecting confidentiality).

Business operations (your “second hat”)

• Own a set of recurring operational workflows that keep the company running (examples: vendor onboarding, insurance renewals coordination, corporate filing coordination, document retention, signature authority matrix, tooling admin related to the above).
• Build simple systems: trackers, playbooks, checklists, and a clean source of truth.

Outside counsel management

• Be the front door: scope, intake, first drafts, budget discipline, and translating legal advice into next steps.
• Ensure the business gets answers that are actionable, not memos.

What success looks like (first 90 days)

• A working contract intake + approval process that doesn’t live in email.
• Core templates in place (at minimum: NDA, consulting agreement, basic MSA/SOW, vendor agreement, pilot/POC agreement).
• A simple “obligations tracker” for key contracts and renewal dates.
• Outside counsel relationships and escalation rules are clear (what you handle vs what goes out).
• Founders spend meaningfully less time on routine legal/ops churn.

Who you are

Minimum requirements (either background can fit)

Option A: Senior Paralegal / Contracts & Ops

• 5+ years supporting legal work in-house or at a firm (contracts, corporate records, deal coordination).
• Excellent organization, writing, and the ability to run a process end-to-end.
• Comfort reading agreements, spotting issues, and escalating appropriately.

Option B: Juris Doctor / Former Lawyer

• Juris Doctor (and ideally experience practicing, in-house and/or firm).
• Hands-on experience negotiating and managing commercial contracts.
• Strong operational instinct: you build systems, not just redlines.

What we care about most

• You close loops. You don’t let open items sit.
• You can prioritize. You know what’s a real risk vs legal noise.
• You can communicate tradeoffs in plain English and recommend a path.
• You’re comfortable working directly with execs and cross-functional partners.

Nice-to-haves (not required)

• Government contracting exposure (FAR/DFARS basics, primes/subs, flowdowns).
• Export controls familiarity (knowing when to raise a flag and who to call).
• IP workflow experience (invention intake, patent counsel coordination, OSS compliance basics).
• Startup experience (speed, ambiguity, messy inputs).