Legal Counsel

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United Kingdom.

📋 Description

• Take charge of all legal affairs within the organization as the primary legal hire.

• Collaborate with leadership, sales, product, people, and operations to facilitate rapid and sustainable growth.

• Lead the drafting, review, and negotiation of enterprise SaaS agreements, including MSAs, DPAs, SLAs, partnership agreements, and security addenda.

• Assist in complex, high-value customer negotiations to reduce deal cycles.

• Create and maintain contract templates, fallback positions, and negotiation playbooks.

• Provide advice on pricing structures, licensing models, and allocation of commercial risks.

• Manage commercial contracts, including NDAs, supplier and vendor terms, reseller and channel agreements, consultancy and services agreements, IP assignments, and procurement.

• Oversee company secretarial matters, statutory registers, Companies House filings, board and shareholder resolutions, minutes, and the share register.

• Assist with board and investor relations, fundraising, due diligence, M&A, joint ventures, and structuring strategic partnerships.

• Support international expansion efforts, including entity setup, intercompany agreements, and transfer pricing documentation.

• Supervise employment, contractor, consultancy, and offer documentation for both UK and international hires.

• Advise on restructures, grievances, exits, settlement agreements, employment policies, right to work, sponsorship, visas, and immigration matters.

• Manage confidentiality, IP assignment, and restrictive covenant provisions.

• Provide legal insight on AI product development, data usage, model deployment, model weights, training, inference, outputs, IP, liability, privacy, and data governance.

• Offer guidance on UK and EU data protection regulations, including GDPR and UK GDPR.

• Monitor the EU AI Act and upcoming AI regulations while advising on export controls.

• Develop scalable legal processes, tools, documentation, internal guidance, and manage the use of external counsel.

• Identify significant legal and regulatory risks, ensuring compliance with relevant laws and industry standards.

⛳️ Requirements

• Qualified solicitor in England & Wales (or an equivalent common law jurisdiction).

• 5–10 years of post-qualification experience (PQE).

• Extensive experience in enterprise SaaS contracting (essential).

• Experience working with AI companies (essential).

• Practical corporate experience, including company secretarial duties, board and investor relations, and support for fundraising or transactions.

• Familiarity with UK employment law, or a proven ability to quickly learn unfamiliar areas with support from external counsel.

• Strong foundation in data protection and technology law.

• Good understanding of export controls.

• Comfortable engaging with the construction and deployment of AI models, including model weights, training versus inference, and fine-tuning on customer data.

• Capacity to identify commercial and intellectual property risks and articulate them in contract terms.

• Preferred experience in high-growth startups.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary, benefits, and equity.

• Complete ownership of the legal function as the first legal hire.

• Direct influence on revenue through enterprise deal support.

• Comprehensive exposure across commercial, corporate, employment, and AI regulation within a single role.

• Work at the crossroads of AI, data, and enterprise software.