Legal Operations Lead

About the Role

This is a foundational legal operations role at a fast-growing AI infrastructure company in the reinforcement learning and model evaluation space. You will own the entire legal operating system, from intake to outside-counsel coordination, and play a direct role in making legal work scalable as commercial volume and complexity grow. It is a hands-on, systems-oriented position that blends contracting work with process design.

What You'll Do

• Own the end-to-end legal workflow, including intake, prioritization, approvals, escalation paths, document management, and outside-counsel coordination.

• Draft, review, and negotiate commercial agreements with buyers, data vendors, and partners, including MSAs, SOWs, data licenses, SLAs, NDAs, and vendor contracts.

• Build and refine contract templates and negotiation playbooks to handle recurring issues such as data rights and usage restrictions quickly and consistently.

• Identify opportunities to automate or streamline high-volume legal workflows using software and AI, while preserving human judgment for complex matters.

• Establish clear decision rules for what stays internal, what can be standardized or automated, and what escalates to founders or outside counsel.

• Manage outside counsel strategically to control spend, scope work efficiently, and reserve external lawyers for high-value or specialist matters.

What We're Looking For

• Law degree required (LLB or equivalent; EU bachelor of law is acceptable).

• 5 or more years of experience in legal operations, contracts management, commercial operations, or transactional legal work at a fast-growing technology company.

• Demonstrated ability to draft, review, and negotiate commercial technology agreements, with sound judgment on routine versus specialist issues.

• Hands-on experience with US commercial contracting conventions.

• Experience building or scaling legal operations, contract management, or deal desk functions from an early stage.

• Ability to design and implement legal workflows, intake systems, document management processes, and approval frameworks.

• Experience managing outside counsel relationships, including scoping, spend control, and escalation decisions.

• Strong commercial judgment to balance legal risk against speed and business priorities.

• Comfort with legal technology platforms, workflow automation tools, and AI; genuine interest in using them to scale legal work.

• Experience with data licensing, IP-intensive transactions, marketplaces, or businesses where contractual rights tie closely to product functionality is a plus.

• Experience working independently in fast-paced, early-stage startup environments is a plus.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary in the range of $160,000 to $200,000 USD annually, plus equity and comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401k, commuter benefits, and access to leading AI tools. Visa sponsorship and relocation support are available for strong candidates.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, CA or Singapore.