Lead Commercial Counsel

We are partnering with a rapidly scaling, venture-backed AI infrastructure company to hire its first dedicated Commercial Counsel.

This is a ground-floor opportunity to join a lean legal team and take ownership of the commercial legal function as the company continues to scale. You'll work closely with Sales/GTM, Product, Engineering and senior leadership, balancing a high volume of sophisticated transactions with the opportunity to build the processes, playbooks and systems that support the company's next phase of growth.

The Role

• Own complex commercial and technology transactions from initial negotiation through execution.
• Partner directly with Sales/GTM to help close strategic enterprise customers while balancing commercial objectives with legal risk.
• Draft and negotiate enterprise customer agreements, SaaS/API and technology licensing agreements, infrastructure and capacity arrangements, strategic partnerships, supplier/procurement agreements, data/content licensing and other commercial contracts.
• Build the commercial legal function's infrastructure, including templates, negotiation playbooks, contracting processes, CLM and AI-enabled legal workflows.
• Advise cross-functional teams on issues involving privacy, data protection, IP, AI, security and evolving regulatory requirements.
• Support sophisticated infrastructure and technology relationships involving cloud, compute, data centers and other strategic providers.
• Manage outside counsel and legal service providers as needed.
• Operate as a highly hands-on individual contributor while helping shape the longer-term commercial legal strategy.

What We're Looking For

• JD and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar.
• 8+ years of relevant legal experience.
• Strong commercial and technology transactions background, ideally combining law firm training with in-house experience.
• Experience within a high-growth technology, AI/ML, developer platform, cloud infrastructure, SaaS or similarly technical business.
• Proven experience negotiating sophisticated enterprise technology transactions across both the buy and sell side.
• Strong understanding of SaaS/software licensing, APIs, IP, privacy and data protection.
• Experience partnering directly with Sales/GTM, Product and Engineering teams.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment where you will be expected to personally execute the work while simultaneously building the function around you.
• Commercially minded and able to make pragmatic decisions in situations where there isn't an established playbook.
• Cloud infrastructure, compute, GPU capacity or data center agreements
• AI/ML or developer infrastructure
• Model, content, data or open-source licensing
• Privacy and cross-border data matters
• Hardware, supply chain or procurement transactions
• Building a commercial legal function during a period of significant company growth
• Implementing CLM, contracting automation or AI-enabled legal workflows

This is not a traditional commercial counsel role within an established legal department. You'll have the opportunity to build the commercial legal function from the ground up, work directly with senior leadership and play a meaningful role in how a rapidly growing AI company sells, partners and scales.

There is also significant potential for the scope of the position to grow alongside the business, including the opportunity to take broader ownership of the commercial legal function over time.

Location: San Francisco - 5 days onsite