# Head of Legal

**Company:** [Beacon AI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/beacon-ai)
**Location:** San Carlos, CA
**Role:** Legal
**Salary:** $225k – $275k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** contracts management, government contracting, far, dfars, ip management, export controls, open source compliance, vendor agreements, ndas, msas, sows
**Posted:** 2026-07-31

> Head of Legal owning contracts, government contracting support, IP hygiene, people agreements, and business operations at a defense tech / dual-use aviation AI company. Requires 5+ years legal/contracts experience (paralegal or JD), strong organization, process ownership, and operational mindset.

## Job Description

## 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).

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