Lead Real Estate Attorney (AI Legal Engineer)

Role Overview

Orbital's Legal Engineering team is composed of former practicing real estate lawyers who turn legal expertise into the logic that powers Orbital. Legal Engineers design, build, and refine the workflows, knowledge bases, and evaluations behind our product, working side by side with AI and software engineers, product managers, and designers. They translate real legal work into AI that thinks like a real estate lawyer, serving as the legal trust layer behind every output our customers rely on.

You'll take your commercial real estate expertise and turn it into the logic that powers Orbital. Instead of manual doc review, you'll automate workflows covering the full spectrum of RE legal work for acquisitions, leases, and title analysis for AmLaw 100 and Magic Circle firms.

You'll help us move an entire industry away from archaic processes by building AI that actually thinks and performs like a real estate lawyer. The opportunity is real - you'll have genuine influence over what we build and how we build it.

What You'll Be Doing

• Operate as a player/coach. Combine deep legal expertise, product insights, and team management to drive client adoption, accelerate value, and yield clear, impactful results for law firms, commercial real estate companies, and other industry leaders.
• Working closely with AI and software engineers, take commercial real estate workflows - acquisitions, leases, and title and survey review - and automate them from initial concept to successful implementation for Am Law 100 and Magic Circle firms.
• Build domain-specific knowledge bases and decision trees that translate legal processes into AI workflows.
• Develop automation blueprints for due diligence, lease reviews, and survey analysis.
• Research jurisdiction-specific nuances in US property law to ensure product accuracy.
• Evaluate model outputs and use those evaluations to continually them
• Collaborate with AI and software engineers to design features that match how attorneys actually work.

What We're Looking For

Essential

• A JD from a nationally accredited law school or equivalent qualification.
• At least 7 years of experience as a licensed attorney in private practice, as in-house counsel, advising sophisticated corporate clients, or similar role.
• Hands-on experience with acquisitions, dispositions, leasing, and/or title and survey review.
• Ability to break down due diligence and other real estate legal work into structured, discrete tasks that can be automated.
• High level of tech literacy and deep curiosity about how large language models can be applied to real estate law, paired with a practical, solutions-oriented mindset and bias toward action.
• Clear communication skills - comfortable explaining legal context to engineers and product managers who aren't lawyers, and engaging credibly with attorneys at leading firms.
• A resourceful, analytical approach to solving problems without a script, and comfort working in a fast-moving environment where priorities shift.
• The drive to change the real estate legal industry and build better, more efficient ways to get real estate deals done

Desirable

• Proven background leading, and mentoring teams within client service or delivery-focused roles.
• Cross-functional exposure across operations, product, business, or compliance; client-facing experience via law firm business development or secondments; and practical familiarity leveraging artificial intelligence within legal workflows.
• Familiarity with LegalTech software, experience managing teams that use AI tools, and/or experience with programming, no-code tools, or software integrations are all pluses.

What We Offer

• Salary range of $200,000 - $265,000 plus equity options and 401(k) match.
• Hybrid working pattern with some time spent in our New York office.
• $1,000 personal development budget and professional equipment.
• 20 days paid holiday plus bank holidays and additional personal days.
• The chance to fix the archaic processes that frustrated you in traditional practice.

Reasons We Might Not Be For You

• We have limited hand-holding and documentation gaps - you'll need to be comfortable figuring things out as you go.
• We move fast and sometimes discard high-quality work when a better approach emerges - this can be overwhelming if you prefer a predictable pace.

• We're Orbital.
• We are a real estate transformation company using AI to fix how the world's largest asset class changes hands.
• Our mission is to help people involved in property transactions understand what they're getting into before they incur legal fees.
• We're on course to process over 1 trillion tokens a year - building for where AI is going rather than just creating another generic chatbot.

• The opportunity here is real. We're Series B funded and scaling from 100 to over 200 people in 2026 to disrupt a $multi-billion global market.
• We truly believe in our product, but we're honest about the trade-offs - the intensity is real, priorities shift, and things break. We carry the weight together, and we need people who can figure things out - sometimes without a script.

• We don't have a polished corporate playbook or perfect documentation yet.
• What we do have is a clear view of where we're going, the capital to get there, and a team that genuinely supports each other when things get difficult.
• We're building something we'll look back on as a defining chapter in our careers.
• It's what excites us.
• It's what energises us.
• It's what gets us out of bed in the morning.

• Security is everyone’s responsibility at Orbital.
• We ask all team members to follow our security policies, complete regular awareness training, and handle sensitive data with care in line with ISO 27001 standards.
• Spot something unusual?
• Reporting risks or incidents quickly helps us maintain the strong culture of security and compliance we all depend on.

• At Orbital, we’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.
• We especially welcome applications from people who are traditionally underrepresented in tech.
• Even if you don’t meet every single requirement, or if the right role isn’t listed yet, we’d still love to hear from you.

• This hiring range is a reasonable estimate of the base pay range for this position at the time of posting. Pay is based on several factors, which may include job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and business requirements.
• Everyone who works with Orbital goes through background screening before they start. It's part of how we keep Orbital secure, for the people who work here and for the client information we're trusted with.