Overview
This role provides senior legal counsel for commercial transactions and strategic business initiatives, supporting customer-facing contracting and related technology and strategic arrangements.
Primary objective
- Draft, review, negotiate, and advise on customer-facing and strategic commercial transactions, with a primary focus on:
- SaaS, software licensing
- Strategic partnership and go-to-market arrangements
- Cloud services
- AI-enabled offerings
- Data processing
- Other commercial arrangements
Secondary objective
- Partner cross-functionally with Sales, Product, Partners, Customer Success, Strategy, Security, Finance, Procurement, and other stakeholders to:
- Enable growth
- Manage legal risk
- Develop scalable contracting processes
- Support strategic initiatives
Responsibilities
- Lead customer, procurement, and strategic commercial negotiations and transactions, including technology-related legal work, by:
- Drafting, reviewing, and negotiating software, SaaS and hybrid, cloud services, AI-related offerings, and strategic partnership agreements
- Collaborating with sales, finance, security, IT, and compliance teams to deliver on time, clarify expectations, and problem-solve
- Managing stakeholder and customer communications
- Serve as a trusted advisor by providing creative, strategic legal advice and business counsel on commercial, operational, and strategic issues, including:
- Timely and accurate responses
- Negotiating a challenging volume of contracts across a range of complexity
- Identifying issues and solving for them
- Engage with customers to ensure they feel listened to and heard and to support delivery.
- Recommend and work on contracting process improvements (e.g., new standard forms and variations) to enhance efficiency and align with business and product requirements.
- Work effectively with AI legal technology tools, identifying which tools work for specific purposes, explaining why, and remaining flexible to trial new tools.
- Lead and support strategic pricing initiatives, pricing governance projects, and commercial model optimization efforts in partnership with Finance, Global Business Operations, and business stakeholders.
- Participate in internal approval workflow systems, prioritize contracts, and respond to questions from stakeholders and clients.
- Use strong working knowledge of AI tools (including legal technology tools), Microsoft O365, Salesforce, and Ironclad.
Requirements
Minimum qualifications
- Juris Doctor from an accredited law school.
- Active bar membership in good standing.
- Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
- Intelligence, flexibility, creativity, diligence, responsiveness, and strong communications skills.
- Reasonable exposure to computer and software technology concepts.
- Solid proficiency with MS Office, Salesforce, and contract management software.
Preferred qualifications
- Eight (8) or more years of relevant experience in-house and/or at a law firm supporting technology transactions.
- Extensive experience negotiating:
- SaaS, software, cloud services
- Professional services, data processing
- Strategic partnerships
- Enterprise commercial agreements
- Experience supporting complex commercial contracting environments.
- Strong understanding of technology, including legal technology, cloud services, software licensing models, information security, privacy, intellectual property, and regulatory considerations.
- Experience supporting AI-enabled products and emerging technology issues.
- Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
- Required (contract-negotiation training/experience):
- Trained in and experience with contract negotiations, including commercial contracts, SaaS contracts, and related services and support agreements
- Required (transaction types):
- Experience with complex software, SaaS and hybrid cloud agreements, master agreements, professional services agreements, and software development agreements
- Desirable but not required:
- Basic knowledge of data privacy laws and practices in a SaaS context involving security and processing of customer data that may include personal information
- Experience with government technology procurement contracting at state, federal, and local levels, including with regard to GSA, SEWP, and FAR; basic knowledge of FedRAMP and application to SaaS offerings and operations
- Understanding of software development, computer technology, SaaS infrastructure and services, open-source communities, and intellectual property concepts and laws
- JD degree from an accredited law school and license to practice in the United States.
- Ability to research and analyze legal issues.
- Solid proficiency with AI tools, legal technology tools, MS Office, and legal research platforms and tools; familiarity with Salesforce, Ironclad, and Asana.
Compensation & Benefits
This position is eligible for total compensation, including:
- Competitive base salary
- Annual performance bonus
- Long-term incentives
The expected salary range for this role is:
Final offered salary will be based on factors including depth of experience, skill set, qualifications, and internal pay equity. Hiring at the top end of the range would not be typical to allow for future meaningful salary growth in this position.
Location
Remote/Hybrid