Founding Legal Counsel

• This is a remote role based in the UK, with occasional in person team meetups.
• You'll be our first dedicated legal hire, so you're building the function and inheriting the old contracts and processes at the same time.
• You'll be the sole member of the legal team and will own both the judgment and the tactical work: marking up contracts, chasing signatures, building templates, and staying on top of compliance.
• There's no one to delegate to, and there's no escalation for the day to day slog.
• The volume is heavy, and the pace is fast. This role suits someone who likes to build and who's hands on; it's not a quiet compliance desk.
• Our values actually matter here. We hire people who reflect them in how they work, collaborate, and make decisions.

What you'll do

• Own commercial contracting end to end: our MSA, DPA and customer red lines. You're who the Account Executives bring a marked up agreement to, and you're who closes it out
• Turn around a high volume of reviews at pace. Contract volume is spiking, driven by growth and by the rise in AI usage
• Set and publish a legal SLA for sales, so turnaround is a promise, not a guess
• Own our risk tolerance and playbook: liability caps, indemnities, termination. Know where we flex, where we hold, and when to escalate
• Run legal intake: what needs you, what sales can self serve, and what genuinely needs external counsel
• Build the playbooks, fallback positions and templates that let AEs answer the easy questions without you

• Own data protection across the business: our DPA, sub processor management, DPIAs, DSARs, records of processing and international transfers
• Keep us on the right side of UK and EU GDPR, US state privacy law, and the local regimes that surface in deals (Quebec Law 25 and China's PIPL are recent examples)
• Make audit readiness a habit, not a scramble, with policies that reflect what we actually do
• Get us diligence ready: corporate housekeeping, share and option documentation, and cleaning up historic contractual exposure before someone else finds it

• Partner with Product and Engineering as we build in a regulated space: background screening, right to work, DBS and credit checks, and AI assisted hiring features
• Own regulatory compliance as the landscape shifts: UK and EU GDPR, FCRA, the EU AI Act, and a growing patchwork of US state law

• Draft and negotiate partnership, reseller and referral agreements, including integration and marketplace partners
• Own NDAs, supplier and vendor terms, and the contract lifecycle from template to signature to renewal
• Keep supplier and integration partner terms robust and commercial

What you'll bring

• 4+ years as a qualified lawyer, or as a contracts manager, legal ops lead or commercial manager with real negotiation authority
• A clear point of view on SaaS commercial terms (what's standard, what's risky, where to flex) from owning customer side contracts end to end: MSAs, order forms, DPAs, NDAs, red lines and liability caps
• Hands on UK and EU GDPR experience: DPAs, DPIAs, DSARs, sub processors, records of processing and international transfers, done as a practitioner, not only from a policy seat
• Time in a scaling company (roughly 30 to 250 people), with limited resources, shifting priorities and a lot of context switching
• Breadth over narrow specialism: happy owning everything from a small order form to our data posture to exit readiness
• A bias toward finding the defensible yes and containing the risk, rather than blocking deals and calling it caution
• Comfort making the call: assess the ask, propose the route, and escalate only the genuine trade offs
• Quick to pick up new tools, and comfortable pushing AI further in your work
• Clear, concise communication that helps other teams move
• Self motivated and happy working independently

• You'd rather advise than do the tactical work: marking up contracts, chasing signatures and building templates
• You need every decision to have a precedent or sign off from above
• Your background is mainly litigation, employment or pure IP, rather than commercial contracting

What we offer

• Comprehensive healthcare: excellent medical, dental and vision coverage for you and your family
• Unlimited holidays: take the time you need to rest and recharge
• Mental health support: unlimited, immediate access to professional counselling via Spill
• Retirement contributions: 401k or pension contributions depending on your location
• Remote first: work where you're most productive, with flexibility and trust as the default
• Equity with real upside: share in the long term value you help create
• Fully paid parental leave: up to 16 weeks of paid leave for new parents
• Learning budget: annual funds for courses, books or anything that supports your growth

What you're wondering

• Do I need to be a qualified lawyer? No. Contracts managers, legal ops leads and commercial managers are in scope if you've owned customer side contracts with real negotiation authority and done hands on GDPR work.
• Who will I work with? You'll report to me and work closely with our Account Executives, Product and Engineering, and you'll decide what genuinely needs external counsel.
• What tools will I use? We lean heavily on AI, Claude in particular, and we'd expect you to push it further in how legal works.
• Where does the work come from? Mostly our sales team (about a third of the role), then data protection, product and partnerships. The split is shown in "What you'll do".