Commercial Counsel/Senior Counsel

Perplexity AI

$160K — $190K *
Legal & Accounting
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • JD with an active U.S. state bar membership
  • 5+ years of law firm or in-house experience with commercial tech agreements
  • Ability to effectively partner with cross-functional teams
  • Deep knowledge of data privacy and security regulations
  • Skill in translating complex legal concepts for non-legal audiences
  • Collaborative mindset and low-ego approach to projects
  • Positive attitude and intellectual curiosity about AI technology

Responsibilities

  • Lead drafting, review, and negotiation of various commercial agreements
  • Serve as the primary legal advisor to accelerate deal velocity
  • Provide strategic counsel on AI-related legal risks
  • Advise on AI-specific legal considerations in agreements
  • Build scalable legal infrastructure and tools for contract management
  • Collaborate with teams to identify and address legal risks early
  • Monitor and interpret evolving regulations for AI and SaaS

Benefits

  • Opportunity to shape a best-in-class legal function
  • High-impact role in a leading AI company
  • Collaborative work environment with diverse teams
  • Hands-on experience in a fast-paced setting
  • Growth potential in a dynamic technology landscape
Full Job Description
In this role, you'll own the full commercial legal lifecycle. You will draft, negotiate, and close a wide range of agreements across partnerships, procurement, infrastructure, and licensing. You will build scalable legal infrastructure and enable the business to move quickly without unacceptable risk.

You'll work closely with teams across the business, including product, engineering, security, finance, and sales to close deals, strengthen our data security and compliance posture, and serve as a trusted advisor on the AI-specific legal questions that come with operating at the frontier of this technology. The ideal candidate brings deep experience negotiating a wide range of commercial technology agreements, including infrastructure and compute procurement agreements, a strong command of data privacy and security frameworks, and the practical judgment to make principled risk calls independently. This is a high-impact, hands-on role for someone who thrives in fast-paced environments, knows how to be a true partner to the business without being a bottleneck, and is excited to help build a best-in-class legal function at one of the most consequential AI companies in the world.

Responsibilities
  • Lead end-to-end drafting, review, and negotiation of commercial agreements, including MSAs, SaaS and API agreements, DPAs, partnership and reseller agreements, strategic collaboration and co-marketing agreements, procurement and vendor contracts, technology and infrastructure agreements, and IP licensing arrangements.
  • Serve as a primary legal partner across the business, providing fast, practical, and business-aligned counsel that accelerates deal velocity without compromising on risk Management.
  • Provide strategic counsel on legal risks across AI infrastructure, compute, partnerships, and enterprise deployments as the company scales.
  • Advise on AI-specific legal considerations in commercial agreements, including acceptable use, data retention and training restrictions, output liability, and evolving regulatory requirements (e.g., EU AI Act, CCPA/CPRA, GDPR).
  • Build and maintain scalable legal infrastructure-contract templates, negotiation playbooks, fallback positions, and tools (e.g., CLM, self-serve workflows)-to support high-volume deal flow and reduce friction in the contracting cycle.
  • Partner cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Security, Finance, and Compliance teams to surface and address legal risk early, particularly on data use, enterprise integrations, and customer-specific compliance requirements.
  • Monitor the evolving regulatory landscape for enterprise AI and SaaS products and translate emerging requirements into practical contractual and policy guidance for internal stakeholders.

Qualifications
  • JD and in good standing with an active U.S. state bar membership.
  • At least 5+ years of law firm and/or in-house experience, with a track record of drafting and negotiating complex commercial technology agreements.
  • Strong business acumen and ability to partner effectively with sales, product, engineering, and executive teams.
  • Deep familiarity with data privacy and security frameworks (GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, SOC 2, HIPAA) and experience negotiating DPAs and related compliance agreements.
  • Prior experience with infrastructure agreements is strongly preferred, including compute procurement (e.g., GPU capacity and cloud/neocloud agreements, colocation, and related SLA and acceptance terms).
  • Ability to communicate clearly with business and technical audiences and effectively translate legal concepts for non-lawyers.
  • Hands-on attitude to tackle projects large and small, low-ego approach to working across the organization.
  • Positive collaborative attitude, comfort with ambiguity and a fast pace, high level of integrity, and intellectual curiosity about AI technology and how these products work.
  • Comfortable working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.


Title and Pay dependent on YOE (Counsel or Senior Counsel)

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