Head of Legal

About the Role

You’ll be TypeSafe’s first legal hire, building and leading our legal function as the company grows. You’ll work directly with our founders and across engineering, product, and go-to-market to help us launch products, work with customers, partners, and vendors, and make thoughtful decisions about risk.

Your foundation should be in commercial work, product counseling, and privacy. You’ll also own the broader legal agenda, handling matters yourself where you have the expertise and bringing in specialists where needed.

This is a hands-on role with substantial judgment and ownership. You should be comfortable negotiating a customer agreement, working through a data-handling question with engineers, and deciding which legal processes we need to build next. We’re looking for someone who can marry legal advice with pragmatism, make clear recommendations, and help the team move forward quickly.

What You'll Own

• Commercial agreements: Lead customer and partner negotiations, including enterprise agreements, API distribution and reseller arrangements, data processing agreements, and vendor contracts. Build templates and negotiation playbooks that support growth and protect what matters.
• Product and privacy counseling: Work with technical teams on product design, data use, retention, international processing, and security commitments. Translate legal requirements into decisions and policies that teams can implement.
• AI and regulatory developments: Identify the laws, regulatory developments, and industry practices that could affect our products and business. Develop informed positions and help us decide when and how to act.
• Legal systems and self-service: Establish contract intake, approval, signing, and management processes. Build guidance and tools that let teams handle routine matters independently, using automation and AI where they improve speed and reliability.
• Company-wide legal support: Own how employment, corporate, governance, intellectual property, and other legal matters get handled. Recognize when specialist advice is needed and turn that advice into clear next steps.
• Outside counsel and resources: Choose and manage outside counsel, set priorities and budgets, and decide what to handle internally. As demand grows, determine where tooling, a contracts manager, additional counsel, or other support would have the greatest impact.
• Business partnership: Build trust across the company, get involved early, and help resolve difficult questions. Offer clear recommendations that account for the legal exposure, commercial stakes, and practical alternatives.

We Are Looking for People Who

• Have at least 10 - 15 years of relevant legal experience, including meaningful in-house experience at a growing technology company.
• Bring strong legal training, ideally including experience at a leading law firm, and a track record of applying it effectively inside a business.
• Have substantial commercial contracting experience and can counsel independently on product and privacy matters, with good judgment about the limits of their expertise.
• Have helped a company scale its legal operations and know how to build processes that fit the company’s stage.
• Are curious about AI and willing to learn how our technology works, how customers use it, and where the legal questions arise.
• Make practical decisions under uncertainty, distinguish material risks from manageable ones, and consider operational and commercial solutions alongside contractual protections.
• Enjoy doing the work themselves, respond quickly, and follow through in a fast-moving environment.
• Communicate clearly and build productive relationships with technical teams, customers, executives, investors, and outside counsel.
• Know how to prioritize limited resources and can explain what they would build, buy, delegate, or leave for later.
• Are admitted to practice in a U.S. jurisdiction and eligible to practice as in-house counsel in California.

We Provide

• Competitive base salary of $250K - $350K annually, plus equity
• 100% covered health insurance
• Daily lunch and dinner
• Visa sponsorship
• 401(k) plans