Founding commercial attorney - fal Legal
About the RoleWe are hiring our first dedicated commercial attorney. You will join as the second lawyer on the team and own the commercial legal function end-to-end. Your work will directly shape how fal sells, partners, builds infrastructure, and scales globally.
Day-to-day, you will lead the negotiation of our most important customer, partner, and supplier agreements, design the templates, playbooks, and processes that let the business move at speed, and serve as the trusted advisor to the go-to-market (GTM) team. This is a ground-floor role with significant ownership and a clear path to expanded scope as the team grows.
The legal function should be a competitive advantage - not a bottleneck - and that's where you come in.
What You'll Do- Draft, review, and negotiate the full range of commercial agreements that power fal's business - enterprise customer contracts, SaaS and API licensing, data center and capacity arrangements, hyperscaler and infrastructure partnerships, model and content licensing, reseller and channel agreements, marketing partnerships, NDAs, and procurement contracts.
- Own enterprise deal cycles end-to-end and partner with the GTM team to close revenue, while ensuring fal's legal risk is appropriately managed across the contract portfolio.
- Build and own the commercial legal infrastructure: templates, playbooks, AI tools, and a contract management solution that scales with the company.
- Monitor regulatory and policy developments most relevant to fal - AI regulation, data protection, export controls, and cross-border data transfer - and translate them into practical guidance and contract positions.
- Manage outside commercial counsel and legal service providers, including budget and performance tracking, so we get leverage where we need it and keep costs disciplined.
- Be a "Generalized Specialist": as the second lawyer on a lean team, pitch in with precision on whatever the company needs, including matters outside your immediate specialty, while learning new skills to support the team's mission.
What You Bring- J.D. from an accredited law school and active membership in good standing of at least one U.S. state bar (California or New York preferred; registered in-house status acceptable).
- 8+ years of relevant legal experience, ideally combining a top-tier law firm foundation with in-house experience at a technology, cloud infrastructure, SaaS, or AI company.
- Proven track record drafting and negotiating complex commercial and technology transactions on both the buy-side and the sell-side, including enterprise customer agreements, infrastructure or supply agreements, and IP licensing.
- Strong working knowledge of enterprise software licensing, SaaS, intellectual property, data protection and privacy (including cross-border transfer), and the security and compliance frameworks customers care about (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001).
- Substantive privacy experience advising on GDPR, CCPA, and U.S. state privacy laws; CIPP/US or CIPP/E certification a plus.
- Excellent legal and business judgment - you can explain complex issues clearly to non-lawyers, take a position under uncertainty, and find practical paths forward in ambiguous situations.
- Genuine curiosity about AI, infrastructure, and the fal products and services, not just papering the deal.
- A doer's instinct: highly responsive, accountable, comfortable juggling multiple high-priority deals on tight timelines, and willing to roll up your sleeves on whatever the moment requires.
- Excellent verbal and written communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Nice to Have- Experience inside an infrastructure-as-a-service, cloud, or AI/ML company, particularly with GPU capacity, data center, or hyperscaler agreements.
- Experience with hardware supply chain, manufacturing, or procurement transactions.
- Experience with debt financing or revenue-based financing agreements.
- Product counseling experience on AI-specific legal issues - data processing, model training data and outputs, and emerging responsible-AI frameworks.
- Experience advising on open-source licensing, model licensing, or content/data licensing.
- Hands-on experience selecting, deploying, and operating modern legal tech and AI-powered legal workflows - including CLM platforms, AI-assisted contracting tools, and e-billing or matter management.
Compensation- $225-275k base salary, meaningful equity, and comprehensive benefits.
Location- San Francisco; onsite five days a week.
What we offer at fal- Interesting and challenging work
- Employee-friendly equity terms (early exercise, extended exercise)
- A lot of learning and growth opportunities
- We offer visa sponsorship and will help you relocate to San Francisco.
- Health, dental, and vision insurance (US)
- Regular team events and offsites
