Legal Engineer

About the role

You’re an engineer first, with a real legal background. You’ll join Firecrawl’s legal team and build the systems that turn legal advice into software: contract review agents, policy checks that run in our pipelines, playbooks the sales team can use without waiting on a lawyer, and proof that our systems do what our terms and commitments say they do.

This is a builder seat on the legal team, not a compliance program seat. You work directly with our lawyers. They make the legal calls, you turn them into code, and you know the law well enough to push back and spot what they missed.

You’ll report to the General Counsel and work every day with our engineers.

Salary Range

$251,000-$276,000 USD/year

Equity Range: Competitive equity. Details shared during the process.

Location: San Francisco, CA (SF HQ). Hybrid, onsite 3+ days a week.

Job Type: Full-Time

Requirements

You write production code today, and you have a real legal background: a JD, or years working inside a law firm or an in-house legal team. Bar admission is a plus.

• Work Authorization: Open to candidates already authorized to work in the US.
• We also support H-1B transfers, F-1 OPT and STEM OPT, TN (Canada and Mexico), and E-3 (Australia).
• We’re not able to sponsor new H-1B visas for candidates outside the US.

What You'll Do

• Build the legal team’s tools yourself: contract intake, redline and review agents, a clause library, and tracking for what we’ve promised each customer
• Turn our lawyers’ advice into code. When counsel decides how we handle something, you make it run in the product and the pipelines, not sit in a memo
• Work the hard web data questions with our counsel: terms of service, robots.txt, copyright, privacy, and the data providers that list on Alexandria. You do the research and the technical analysis. They make the call
• Own the technical side of our legal commitments. Show that our systems do what our terms, DPAs, and policies say, in a way that holds up in a customer security review
• Build the tools that let sales and ops handle routine paper without waiting on legal
• Find legal risk in the product before it ships, and fix it with engineering rather than a list of no’s

What We're Looking for

• You’re an engineer first. You’ve shipped production software people use: Python or TypeScript, APIs, data, and LLMs
• You have a real legal background: a JD, or years inside a law firm or an in-house legal team. Bar admission is a plus
• Maybe you were an engineer before law school, or you went to law school and ended up building. Either way, you’re fluent in both
• You’re an AI super user. This is a hard requirement, not a nice-to-have. You reach for AI to move faster by default
• You turn vague legal questions into clear rules, and clear rules into systems
• You’re a self-starter. Nobody is going to hand you a plan. You’ll build this function while running it

What We're Not Looking for

• A lawyer who has never written code, or who only “works closely with engineers”
• An engineer with no legal background
• A compliance program manager who tracks controls in a spreadsheet
• Someone who optimizes for process over shipping

A Note on Pace

• We operate at an absurd level of urgency because the window for what we're building won't stay open forever.
• If that excites you, keep reading.
• If it doesn't, no hard feelings, but this role probably isn't for you.

Benefits & Perks

Available to All Employees

• Salary that makes sense: $251,000-$276,000 USD/year, based on impact, not tenure
• Own a piece: Gain competitive equity in what you're helping build
• Generous PTO: 15 days mandatory, anything after 24 days, just ask (holidays excluded). Take the time you need to recharge
• Parental leave: 12 weeks fully paid, for all parents
• Wellness stipend: $100 USD/month for the gym, therapy, massages, or whatever keeps you human
• Learning & Development: Expense up to $1,000 USD/year toward anything that helps you grow professionally
• Team offsites: A change of scenery, minus the trust falls
• Sabbatical: 3 paid months off after 4 years, do something fun and new

Available to Us-based Full-time Employees

• Full coverage, no red tape: Medical, dental, and vision (100% for employees, 50% for partner and kids). No weird loopholes, just care that works
• Life & Disability insurance: Employer-paid basic life and AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Coverage for life's curveballs
• Virtual care and a health guide: Teladoc for the couch doctor visit, plus Rightway to answer coverage questions and fight billing errors for you
• Mental health: Talkspace, therapy and psychiatry on your schedule
• Fertility and family building: Carrot, covering you and your partner
• EAP: Free confidential counseling, legal and financial consults, and online will prep through Guardian
• 401(k) plan: Retirement might be a ways off, but future-you will thank you
• Pre-tax benefits: HSA, FSA, and commuter benefits to help your wallet out a bit
• Supplemental options: Extra life and AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, plus pet, legal, and identity protection through MetLife

Available to Sf-based Employees

• SF HQ perks: Snacks, drinks, team lunches, intense ping pong, and peak startup energy
• E-Bike transportation: A loaner electric bike to get you around the city, on us

Interview Process

Application Review: Send us something you’ve built (a repo, a tool, a demo) and a quick note on your legal background and why this excites you. We care about what you’ve done, not where you went to school.

• Intro Chat (~25 min): A quick conversation to get to know each other before we go deep.
• We’ll talk about what you’ve been working on, what drew you to Firecrawl, and what you’re looking for in your next role.
• Time for your questions too.

• Technical Chat (~45 min): Build something live. We’ll take a real legal problem from our world and you’ll turn it into working code.
• Legal Chat (~45 min): A real legal question from our world, worked through with our counsel. We care how you reason, not what you’ve memorized.
• Founder Chat (~25 min): Culture, pace, ownership, and how you like to work. Time for your questions too.

• Paid Work Trial (~40 Hours): Work with the team on a real, scoped piece of the work, paid at a contractor rate.
• It’s the truest signal for both sides.
• You see what building at Firecrawl actually feels like, and we see how you operate.
• Remote-friendly, and we’ll flex around your current commitments.

If you’re an engineer who knows the law, you should join us.