Head of Legal

ABOUT AIROPS AirOps is the full-service platform for brand growth in the age of AI search. As consumers shift from traditional search engines to platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, the entire ruleset of growth is being rewritten. Buyers now rely on agents to discover, recommend, and purchase products and services for them. If your brand isn't part of the answer, you aren't in the running. Our platform offers everything a brand needs to get found, recommended, and earn trust. We work with category leaders, including teams at Ramp, Chime, Airbnb, ServiceNow, and Rippling, to drive visibility and accelerate growth from AI search. Backed by Greylock, Unusual Ventures, Wing VC, and Founder Collective, we're headquartered in San Francisco, New York, and Montevideo. ABOUT THE ROLE AirOps is hiring its first Head of Legal to build the legal function and provide practical guidance as the company scales. You’ll work closely with the executive team, Product, Engineering, Sales, Finance, and People. You’ll move between strategic initiatives, customer and partner negotiations, product questions, and the detailed work required to create a durable legal foundation. The emphasis is on judgment, ownership, and clear communication. You should be comfortable making progress when the facts are incomplete, identifying what the evidence supports, and helping the business decide what to do next. WHAT YOU’LL OWN BUILD THE LEGAL FUNCTION • Establish AirOps’s legal strategy, policies, priorities, and operating model while serving as the primary advisor to the executive team. • Build scalable templates, playbooks, approval frameworks, and contracting workflows. • Create clear methods for assessing legal risk, including assumptions, tradeoffs, and escalation thresholds. • Implement legal technology, automation, and AI-assisted workflows to improve speed, consistency, and visibility. ENABLE COMMERCIAL GROWTH • Draft, review, and negotiate enterprise SaaS agreements, MSAs, order forms, DPAs, SOWs, partnerships, reseller agreements, and vendor contracts. • Partner with Sales, Partnerships, Finance, and Customer Success to accelerate deal cycles and support revenue growth. • Develop negotiation guidance, fallback positions, and self-service resources for recurring transactions. • Advise on pricing, customer commitments, liability allocation, indemnification, data rights, and other commercial issues. • Communicate recommendations clearly to executives, customers, prospects, and strategic partners. ADVISE ON AI, DATA, AND PRODUCT • Partner with Product, Engineering, Data, and Security throughout the product lifecycle. • Develop practical guidance on privacy, data protection, security, advertising, consumer protection, and emerging AI regulation. • Support product launches, integrations, new workflows, and expansion into new markets. • Monitor legal developments affecting AI, search, content, marketing technology, and data without overstating uncertain conclusions. SUPPORT CORPORATE AND OPERATIONAL MATTERS • Advise on corporate governance, Board matters, equity administration, financings, investor diligence, and strategic transactions. • Partner with Finance and People on employment, benefits, compensation, equity, and workforce matters. • Manage intellectual property strategy, including trademarks, copyrights, open-source software, and proprietary technology. • Oversee insurance, disputes, compliance, risk management, and regulatory matters. • Build the legal team and operating infrastructure needed to support AirOps as it grows. BUILD CROSS-FUNCTIONAL PARTNERSHIP • Turn open-ended business questions into clear legal analyses, recommendations, and next steps. • Communicate conclusions directly without hiding caveats or burying the decision. • Embed with teams on focused strategic initiatives and high-priority business problems. • Help AirOps preserve its speed, quality, ownership, and customer-focused culture as it scales. WHAT YOU’LL BRING • 10+ years of legal experience, including a combination of top-tier law firm and in-house experience at a high-growth technology, SaaS, AI, data, or marketing technology company. • Strong experience negotiating sophisticated enterprise commercial agreements and advising executive stakeholders. • Practical knowledge of privacy, data protection, intellectual property, AI, software, and technology transactions. • Experience supporting corporate governance, financings, equity matters, employment issues, risk management, and outside counsel. • Proven ability to operate as a department of one or as an early legal leader. • Strong business judgment, clear communication skills, and a solutions-oriented approach to risk. • Willingness to use AI tools, automation, and systems thinking to improve legal workflows. • Active membership in at least one U.S. state bar and ability to practice in California. • Low-ego, highly accountable, and comfortable operating hands-on in a fast-moving environment. NICE TO HAVES • Experience with AI-powered products, content platforms, search, SEO, AEO, marketing technology, or developer tools. • Experience with AI-generated content, copyright, content licensing, model-training data, or platform governance. • Experience scaling a legal function through a Series B or later stage of growth. • Experience implementing CLM, contract automation, legal operations, or AI-assisted legal workflows. • Experience supporting international operations or enterprise go-to-market teams. OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES 1. Extreme Ownership 2. Quality 3. Curiosity and Play 4. Make Our Customers Heroes 5. Respectful Candor BENEFITS • Equity in a fast-growing startup • Competitive benefits package tailored to your location • Flexible time off policy • Parental Leave • A fun-loving and (just a bit) nerdy team that loves to move fast! Compensation: $250K - $300K