Commercial Legal Counsel

About CoLab

At CoLab, we help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.

CoLab is the AI platform for driving stronger engineering decisions. Every design review in CoLab builds a knowledge repository of design feedback, decisions, and lessons learned - which AI agents draw from to flag issues on future designs before they compound. The more your team works in CoLab, the smarter it gets and the faster you arrive at the ideal design. Companies like Ford, Komatsu, and Johnson Controls use CoLab to catch issues earlier, eliminate rework cycles, and bring products to market faster.

Founded in St. John’s, Newfoundland, CoLab has grown quickly from our first customer in 2019 to a rapidly scaling company. We’ve recently been recognized on Deloitte’s Fast 50™ and Fast 500™, and named a Canadian company to watch by The Globe and Mail and Financial Post.

About the Role

You’ll be the first line of legal support for CoLab’s go-to-market engine - negotiating SaaS contracts and partnering closely with Sales and Security to keep deals moving and data protected.

This is a hands-on role where you’ll own both the legal work and the operational systems that drive it. That means helping build scalable contract workflows, and taking pride in making sure nothing slips through the cracks.

Our Ideal Candidate

You’re a commercially minded lawyer who wants to be close to the business—not just advising from the sidelines. You have experience negotiating SaaS contracts with customers of all sizes, including large enterprise customers, deep knowledge of data privacy, and get energized by solving for speed and precision.

You bring the same level of care to helping us build and update our processes and workflows as you do redlining a DPA. You understand that processes are part of the product—and you don’t consider operational rigor to be a chore.

You’ll thrive here if you:

• Are a strong communicator who can hold your own with customers, Sales and Security—without ego and with respect
• Primarily see yourself as a partner to Sales and Security
• Are comfortable thinking out of the box:  challenging assumptions, doing things differently and taking qualified risks 
• Are energized by a fast-moving environment where you’ll be left to own your work
• Curious and able to keep up with our rapidly changing and innovative technology

What you’ll do:

• Lead and manage SaaS commercial contract negotiations including DPAs 
• Lead the intake, tracking, and reporting of legal agreements
• Lead and improve contract operations: help design a system for managing negotiated contracts at scale
• Partner closely with Sales and Security on contract reviews and data protection terms
• Flag and escalate legal or commercial risks to the General Counsel as needed
• Assist General Counsel with other legal work as required

Who you are: 

• Extensive legal experience, bonus points if you have in-house counsel experience 
• Demonstrated expertise in negotiating complex customer contracts, with a strong ability to drive favorable terms while balancing commercial objectives and risk.
• Familiarity with data privacy laws across US, Canada, and Europe (GDPR, PIPEDA, etc.)
• Strong attention to detail and follow-through—especially on the operational side
• Comfortable using legal-focused software applications to track and manage contract activity and negotiations
• Experience in other areas of law (particularly governance, employment, intellectual property) is useful

Equity Note

Frequently cited statistics show that people who identify with historically marginalized groups are likely to apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. We encourage you to help us break that statistic and apply even if you don’t meet every single qualification—your potential is what matters most to us.