# Head of Legal

**Company:** [AirOps](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/airops)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Legal
**Salary:** $250k – $300k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** Enterprise Saas Agreements, Contract Negotiation, Privacy, Data Protection, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, Corporate Governance, Employment Law, Legal Operations, Contract Lifecycle Management, Open-Source Software, Regulatory Compliance, Risk Management
**Posted:** 2026-09-02

> Leads and builds AirOps’s legal function, advising executives and cross-functional teams on commercial transactions, AI and data issues, corporate matters, and risk. Requires 10+ years of legal experience, sophisticated technology transactions expertise, and California practice eligibility.

## Job Description

## 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.

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