Head of Legal

Responsibilities

Build the Legal Function

• Establish legal strategy, policies, priorities, and operating model; serve as primary advisor to the executive team.
• Create scalable templates, playbooks, approval frameworks, and contracting workflows.
• Develop legal-risk assessment methods covering assumptions, tradeoffs, and escalation thresholds.
• Implement legal technology, automation, and AI-assisted workflows.

Enable Commercial Growth

• Draft, review, and negotiate enterprise SaaS agreements, MSAs, order forms, DPAs, SOWs, partnership and reseller agreements, and vendor contracts.
• Partner with Sales, Partnerships, Finance, and Customer Success to accelerate deal cycles.
• Develop negotiation guidance, fallback positions, and self-service resources.
• Advise on pricing, customer commitments, liability, indemnification, data rights, and related commercial matters.

Advise on AI, Data, and Product

• Advise Product, Engineering, Data, and Security throughout the product lifecycle.
• Develop guidance on privacy, data protection, security, advertising, consumer protection, and emerging AI regulation.
• Support product launches, integrations, new workflows, and expansion into new markets.
• Monitor legal developments affecting AI, search, content, marketing technology, and data.

Corporate and Operational Matters

• Advise on corporate governance, Board matters, equity administration, financings, investor diligence, and strategic transactions.
• Support employment, benefits, compensation, equity, and workforce matters.
• Manage intellectual property strategy, including trademarks, copyrights, open-source software, and proprietary technology.
• Oversee insurance, disputes, compliance, risk management, and regulatory matters.
• Build the legal team and operating infrastructure.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Turn open-ended business questions into clear legal analyses, recommendations, and next steps.
• Communicate conclusions directly and clearly.
• Embed with teams on strategic initiatives and high-priority business problems.
• Help preserve speed, quality, ownership, and customer focus as the company scales.

Requirements

• 10+ years of legal experience, including top-tier law firm and in-house experience at a high-growth technology, SaaS, AI, data, or marketing technology company.
• Strong experience negotiating sophisticated enterprise commercial agreements and advising executive stakeholders.
• Practical knowledge of privacy, data protection, intellectual property, AI, software, and technology transactions.
• Experience with corporate governance, financings, equity matters, employment issues, risk management, and outside counsel.
• Experience operating as a department of one or as an early legal leader.
• Strong business judgment, clear communication, and a solutions-oriented approach to risk.
• Willingness to use AI tools, automation, and systems thinking to improve legal workflows.
• Active membership in at least one U.S. state bar and ability to practice in California.
• Comfortable operating hands-on in a fast-moving environment.

Nice to Have

• Experience with AI-powered products, content platforms, search, SEO, AEO, marketing technology, or developer tools.
• Experience with AI-generated content, copyright, content licensing, model-training data, or platform governance.
• Experience scaling a legal function through Series B or later growth stages.
• Experience implementing CLM, contract automation, legal operations, or AI-assisted legal workflows.
• Experience supporting international operations or enterprise go-to-market teams.

Compensation and Benefits

• Salary: $250,000–$300,000 annually.
• Equity in a fast-growing startup.
• Competitive benefits package tailored to location.
• Flexible time off policy.
• Parental leave.