Commercial Counsel

The Opportunity

SandboxAQ's legal team supports the business by protecting the company's innovations and enabling growth while mitigating legal risk. The team embodies curiosity, collaboration, and creative problem-solving, and works closely with business, finance, general managers, R&D leadership, and other cross-functional teams.

We are looking for a Commercial Counsel to own the deals that move our business forward. You will be responsible for contracts across the commercial spectrum - customer agreements, research collaborations, partnerships, data licensing arrangements, and the vendor and software contracts that keep our scientists and engineers equipped - with a particular focus on our life sciences and computational chemistry work.

As an early legal hire, you will help build a forward-thinking, business-savvy, dynamic legal team - including the playbooks, templates, and self-serve paths that both mitigate risk and let the business move quickly without a lawyer in every loop.

Key Responsibilities

• Own customer deals (with a focus on life sciences and computational chemistry deals) end to end. Structure, draft, and negotiate customer engagements (bespoke and standard), including in the material science and drug-discovery spaces, research collaborations, sponsored research agreements, industry partnerships, commercial pilots, data in-licenses, etc. Work closely with the sales and business teams.
• Own and build out capabilities for broader contract work. Negotiate customer agreements and statements of work across our business units, channel and technology partnerships, NDAs, and vendor, SaaS, and professional services agreements.
• Be a trusted partner to the science and business teams. Work directly with PhD chemists, biologists, and ML researchers, alongside general managers, finance, and R&D leadership seamlessly and collaboratively, proactively identifying key issues and leading the broader group through the problem solving process.
• Build for scale. Create and maintain playbooks, templates, fallback positions, and escalation paths; stand up self-serve routes for routine agreements; and use AI tooling to accelerate review, triage, and drafting so the team's leverage grows faster than its headcount.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Juris Doctor (J.D.) or equivalent law degree, with admission to practice in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• 6+ years of substantive commercial transactional experience, with a demonstrated record of independently owning and closing complex technology or science-driven deals.
• Deep fluency in a broad spectrum of business and commercial engagement and transaction structures, IP ownership and license scope, confidentiality, data rights and privacy, limitation of liability, indemnification, warranties, and termination, among other things.
• Strategic and agile, with the ability to thrive in fast-paced, high-growth environments. Strong desire to build commercial infrastructure from the ground up.
• Collaborative and high EQ, with the ability to build relationships across diverse teams (from sales teams to technical teams) and translate complex legal concepts into actionable business strategies.

Highly Desired Skills & Experience

• Life sciences and/or material science transactional depth. Experience with material science, pharma, biotech, or medical device collaborations, drug-discovery or research partnerships, computational chemistry or AI-driven discovery arrangements, or university and technology transfer agreements.
• A combination of in-house and Big Law experience.
• An undergraduate or graduate degree in a STEM field - chemistry, biochemistry, biology, computer science, physics, or similar - is strongly valued but not required.
• Experience with AI/ML products and the contractual questions.
• Exposure to data licensing, data-sharing, and privacy requirements across multiple jurisdictions.
• Demonstrated use of, or specific interest in, AI tooling to accelerate legal work.

SandboxAQ Welcomes All

We are committed to fostering a culture of belonging and respect, where diverse perspectives are actively sought and valued. Our multidisciplinary environment provides ample opportunity for continuous growth - working alongside humble, empowered, and ambitious colleagues ready to tackle epic challenges.