Commercial Counsel

Overview

This role supports scaling commercial legal operations as partnership activity grows rapidly. Reporting to the General Counsel, you will own end-to-end contract lifecycle management for partnerships and build the legal operations tooling that enables standard deals to close without waiting on senior lawyers.

Responsibilities

• Deal desk support

  • Intake and triage partnership team requests.
  • Draft and negotiate NDAs (using the organization’s standard paper and counterparty paper).
  • Produce first drafts and negotiate standard partnership and incentive agreements.
  • Manage signature packs and prepare signing summaries.

• Post-signature tracking

  • Maintain a single contract repository connected to the CRM.
  • Track obligations in an obligations register (milestones, grant tranches, exclusivity periods, notice windows, renewals).
  • Provide alerts to deal owners and Finance and act as the go-to person for conditions of signed deals.

• Legal operations infrastructure

  • Develop negotiation playbooks and a clause library.
  • Maintain consolidated templates and a Legal FAQ for recurring partner questions.
  • Design AI workflows and agents for intake, drafting, and review.
  • Track outside counsel budget usage.
  • Deliver a monthly report on legal throughput.

• Vendor and compliance operations

  • Manage standard vendor and SaaS terms, renewals, and an insurance calendar.
  • Handle due diligence and security questionnaires.
  • Maintain internal policy upkeep and data room hygiene.

• Additional support (as capacity allows)

  • Corporate housekeeping for legal entities.
  • Support outside counsel on employment, IP, and privacy matters.

• Cross-functional collaboration

  • Work daily with the partnership team, Finance, RevOps, BizOps, and outside counsel.

Requirements (Must Have Skills & Experience)

• Legally trained (qualified lawyer or equivalent law degree).
• 5 to 8 years of commercial contracting experience, with part of it in-house at a fast-growing technology company.
• Experience negotiating partnership, integration, or licensing agreements on both your organization’s paper and the counterparty’s; US-style commercial drafting is essential.
• Proven practical legal operations experience, including:
  • Contract lifecycle tooling
  • Playbooks
  • Intake processes
  • Reporting
• Ability to build and use AI tools:
  • Write prompts and skills
  • Automate document workflows
  • Know where lawyer review is still required
• Comfortable working with Finance on payment mechanics, milestones, and budgets, and using a CRM as the source of truth.
• Can support a deal team under time pressure.
• Clear, concise communication with non-lawyers.
• Strong ownership and autonomy in a startup pace with limited support.
• Comfortable operating in fast-changing, ambiguous contexts.
• Ability to work across European time zones and US Eastern time, with shifting priorities.
• Team-first mindset with low ego.

Success Metrics

• First 30 days

  • Understand products and main commercial relationships.
  • Own the partnership legal queue and all NDAs.
  • Read every live partnership agreement and the standard templates.

• First 3 months

  • Turn around counterparty-paper NDAs within 2 working days.
  • Ensure every signed agreement is stored in one repository linked to its CRM record.
  • Make the obligations register live for all agreements in force, with alerts to deal owners and Finance.

• First 6 months

  • Enable standard template deals to run without senior lawyer involvement except for listed deviations.
  • Consolidate partner categories into an agreed set of templates, each with a playbook.
  • Deliver a monthly throughput report (volume, cycle time, deviations).
  • Ensure vendor renewals and insurance sit on a single calendar.
  • Propose the 2027 legal operations roadmap.

Compensation & Benefits

• Fair, top-tier compensation.
• Real flexibility and support for deep work and growth.
• Health coverage.
• Time together in Paris.
• Support for keeping learning.

Location

• Remote — Europe or US (EST only). Paris or New York preferred.

Equal Opportunity

The organization welcomes applicants from all backgrounds and hires based on talent, potential, and values alignment.