About the RoleWe are hiring our first General Counsel. This is a foundational hire: you will build Vapi's legal function from scratch and own legal strategy across the company. You will be a strategic partner to the CEO, the leadership team, and the board, and a hands-on operator who writes contracts, ships policy, and stays close to the product.
Voice AI is one of the most regulated frontiers in AI. Every call we power touches consent law, telecom regulation, biometrics, AI-specific rules, and a fast-moving patchwork of state and international regimes. We need a lawyer who can move at startup speed without compromising on the rigor enterprise customers and regulators expect.
What You'll Do- Commercial and enterprise contracts
- Build Vapi's commercial playbook: MSAs, order forms, DPAs, BAAs, and partnership agreements that win enterprise deals while protecting the business.
- Partner directly with Sales and Solutions Engineering on high-stakes negotiations with Fortune 500 customers.
- Own procurement, vendor, and reseller agreements as we scale our partner ecosystem and underlying model and infrastructure vendors.
- Establish thresholds, fallback positions, and self-service contracting paths so the legal function scales sub-linearly with revenue.
- AI and voice-specific regulatory compliance
- Own Vapi's position on the TCPA and the FCC's AI-voice rulings, including consent capture, calling windows, DNC handling, and disclosure obligations for both inbound and outbound use cases.
- Track and operationalize state AI laws and AI-voice statutes, including the Colorado AI Act, Texas SB 140, California Civil Code 3344, Illinois BIPA voiceprint provisions, and emerging proposals in NY, GA, PA, and others.
- Lead Vapi's response to the EU AI Act, including risk classification of voice agents, transparency obligations, and documentation requirements for high-risk uses.
- Develop voice-cloning and synthetic-voice policies, including acceptable-use rules for the platform, consent verification, watermarking and provenance, and law enforcement response.
- Serve as the company's primary point of contact with regulators, including the FCC, FTC, state AGs, and international counterparts.
- Privacy and data protection
- Own Vapi's global privacy program, including GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, and emerging state regimes.
- Lead HIPAA compliance and BAA negotiation for our healthcare and insurance customers, in close partnership with Security and Engineering.
- Partner with Security on SOC 2, ISO 27001, and customer audits, and own the legal aspects of incident response and breach notification.
- Set data-handling, retention, and residency policies for voice recordings, transcripts, and derived data, in coordination with model providers and infrastructure vendors.
- Corporate, financing, IP, and employment
- Run corporate matters end-to-end: board governance, equity administration, 409A, option grants, and cap-table hygiene.
- Lead financings, secondary transactions, and (eventually) M26A from the legal side, working closely with the CEO and CFO function.
- Build Vapi's IP strategy, including patent program, trademark portfolio, open-source policy, and trade-secret protection across our model orchestration and voice infrastructure stack.
- Own employment legal: offers, equity, separations, immigration, anti-discrimination training, and the legal aspects of our compensation philosophy as we scale.
- Strategic and operating partner
- Sit on the leadership team. Help us decide which markets to enter, which customers to take, and which lines we won't cross.
- Brief the board and investors on legal and regulatory risk in clear, business-first language.
- Build the legal function: own outside counsel relationships, set the budget, hire your first reports as we grow, and instrument legal so we can measure cycle time and risk.
- Be a culture carrier. Act like a founder. Stay customer-obsessed. Respect the engineering-first DNA of the company.
Who You Are- J.D. from a top law school and active bar membership (California preferred).
- 8+ years of relevant experience, including a strong foundation at a top-tier law firm and meaningful in-house time at a high-growth technology company. Prior experience as a GC, Head of Legal, or senior in-house lead is a strong plus.
- Deep commercial contracting chops with enterprise SaaS or infrastructure customers. You have negotiated large MSAs, DPAs, and BAAs across regulated industries.
- Working fluency in one or more of: TCPA / telecom regulation, AI regulation (Colorado AI Act, EU AI Act), biometric privacy (BIPA), HIPAA, or content/IP issues specific to generative AI.
- Comfort sitting next to engineers and PMs and reasoning about product behavior, not just paper. You can read an API spec, a system diagram, or a security architecture without flinching.
- A bias to action. You write the first draft, ship the policy, and iterate. You do not gatekeep through the process.
- Excellent judgment under uncertainty. Voice AI law is genuinely unsettled in places, and you are comfortable making calls and owning them.
- Clear, plainspoken communication with executives, customers, and regulators alike.
- Bonus points:
- Prior experience as the first or sole GC at a Series A-C company.
- Background at a comms, CPaaS, voice, or contact-center company (e.g., Twilio, Five9, Genesys, RingCentral) or at a foundation-model or AI-platform company.
- Hands-on experience with SOC 2 Type II, HITRUST, or ISO 27001 in a legal capacity.
- Direct experience navigating regulator inquiries, CIDs, or formal investigations.
- International experience, particularly with EU, UK, Canadian, or LATAM data-protection regimes.
What We Offer- Competitive compensation: includes a strong base salary and meaningful equity ownership
- Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision plans
- Flexible time off: take-what-you-need vacation policy with an emphasis on rest and balance
- Daily meals: catered lunches and dinners provided for in-office days
- Lifestyle & wellness stipends: monthly allowances to support rent, transportation, food, fitness, and mental well-being
- Professional development: annual learning stipends for courses, conferences, and upskilling
- Team connection: regular offsites, team events, and opportunities to build in-person relationships
