Legal Program Manager, Contracts and Governance

Anthropic$220K — $285K *
Legal & Accounting
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8-10 years of experience in legal program management or commercial legal support, ideally in tech or SaaS
  • Thorough understanding of sell-side commercial contracts, including SaaS and enterprise agreements
  • Competence in interpreting and analyzing legal contracts with a focus on compliance
  • Familiarity with revenue recognition (ASC 606) and its impact on contract terms
  • Proven ability to develop and improve contracting workflows and management systems
  • Strong cross-functional collaboration skills with teams like Sales, Finance, and Accounting
  • Excellent project management abilities for handling diverse workstreams effectively
  • Ability to communicate legal concepts to non-legal stakeholders clearly

Responsibilities

  • Improve the commercial contracting lifecycle for sell-side agreements, ensuring compliance with ASC 606
  • Collaborate with Finance to structure contracts that support accurate revenue recognition
  • Maintain governance workflows and templates to integrate compliance into contracting processes
  • Develop contract governance controls that align with compliance requirements and internal policies
  • Track and manage material agreements and risks for SEC reporting and audit purposes
  • Design execution standards for contract processes with a focus on SOX compliance
  • Engage with cross-functional teams to ensure accurate reporting of commercial commitments
  • Utilize AI tools to enhance contracting efficiency and manage governance exceptions

Benefits

  • Opportunities for hybrid work arrangements
  • Visa sponsorship available for qualified candidates
  • Encouragement of applications from diverse candidates
  • Focus on safety with protocols against recruitment scams
  • Professional development opportunities in a high-growth, tech environment
Full Job Description
About the role

Anthropic is seeking an experienced Legal Program Manager to join our Commercial Legal team, focused on contracts and governance. This role is central to Anthropic's compliance efforts on the commercial side: you will embed deeply in our sell-side contracting processes, partner across functions, and help build the controls, workflows, and governance infrastructure that revenue-generating activities require as the company matures.

You will sit at the intersection of Legal, Finance, Revenue Operations, Sales, Partnerships, Engineering, and Accounting - ensuring that commercial contracting practices meet our governance and compliance standards, with particular emphasis on revenue recognition workstreams. This is a high-visibility role where you will be expected to operate as a player-coach: managing and improving contracting processes yourself while building scalable systems, templates, and playbooks as the function grows.
Key responsibilities
  • Partner with Commercial Legal to continuously improve the end-to-end commercial contracting lifecycle for sell-side agreements (SaaS/API subscriptions, enterprise licenses, partnership and channel agreements, statements of work, and order forms), ensuring alignment with revenue recognition requirements under ASC 606
  • Partner with Finance and Accounting to ensure commercial contract terms and structures support accurate revenue recognition, including proper identification of performance obligations, variable consideration, contract modifications, and multi-element arrangements
  • Develop and maintain contract management workflows, templates, approval matrices, and playbooks that embed governance and compliance requirements directly into the contracting process
  • Build and operate contract governance controls tied to compliance requirements, including contract review procedures, delegation of authority frameworks, and exception-tracking mechanisms
  • Maintain disclosure-support processes for commercial contracts, including tracking of material agreements, contract-related risks, and commitments that feed SEC reporting and audit requirements
  • Partner with Revenue Operations, Sales, and Engineering to design and enforce contract execution standards - including signature authority, amendment protocols, and proper documentation practices - that support SOX compliance and internal controls over financial reporting
  • Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders (Sales, Partnerships, Finance, FP&A, Accounting, Engineering, and external auditors) to ensure commercial commitments are properly captured, classified, and reported
  • Deploy LLM and AI tooling to scale contracting throughput, surface governance exceptions, and reduce manual handling
Minimum qualifications
  • At least 8-10 years of experience in legal program management, legal operations, contracts management, or commercial legal support, preferably in a technology or SaaS environment
  • Deep, practical knowledge of sell-side commercial contracting processes, including SaaS, subscription, and enterprise licensing agreements
  • Strong ability to read, interpret, and analyze commercial contracts, with a thorough understanding of legal requirements, key contractual provisions, risk allocation, and compliance obligations (past experience negotiating and drafting contracts is a significant plus)
  • Working familiarity with revenue recognition principles (ASC 606) and how contract terms and deal structures impact revenue treatment
  • Experience building or significantly improving contracting workflows, templates, approval processes, or contract lifecycle management systems
  • Demonstrated ability to partner cross-functionally with Sales, Finance, Accounting, Engineering, and other business teams to align contracting practices with corporate requirements
  • Strong project management skills with the ability to manage multiple workstreams, drive accountability, and deliver results in a fast-paced, scaling environment
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex legal and financial concepts into clear, actionable guidance for non-legal stakeholders
  • Sound judgment and the ability to identify and escalate contract risks, governance gaps, and compliance issues proactively
  • Comfort using AI and LLM tools to streamline and scale routine contracting work
Preferred qualifications
  • Prior experience working in a public company environment, with firsthand knowledge of the governance, compliance, and reporting cadences that public company operations require
  • Experience at a high-growth technology company that has undergone (or is preparing for) a company transition
  • Deep cross-functional experience partnering with Accounting, Engineering, and other technical and operational teams - not just Sales and Finance - to drive contracting and governance initiatives
  • Familiarity with SOX compliance requirements, particularly internal controls over financial reporting as they relate to the revenue cycle and commercial contracting
  • Hands-on experience with Ironclad as a contract lifecycle management platform; experience with other CLM tools (Icertis, DocuSign CLM, Salesforce, or similar) also valued
  • Experience with vendor and supplier contracting processes, bringing a well-rounded understanding of both sides of the commercial contracting lifecycle
  • Background in building delegation of authority frameworks or contract governance programs from the ground up
  • Professional certifications such as PMP or CPCM (Certified Professional Contracts Manager)
  • Experience managing or administering equity-related commercial agreements, strategic partnerships, or complex multi-party commercial arrangements
  • Interest in AI policy, AI safety, and the legal and governance questions emerging at the frontier of the field


The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role's On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary:

$220,000-$285,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from [redacted].com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links-visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.

About Anthropic

Anthropic is an artificial intelligence research lab that focuses on developing AI systems that are safe, reliable, and trustworthy. The company was founded in 2019 by Dr. Yoshua Bengio, a leading AI researcher and winner of the Turing Award. Anthropic's research is focused on developing AI systems that can learn from small amounts of data, reason about complex systems, and interact with humans in a natural way. The company is based in New York City and has a team of experienced AI researchers and engineers.
Learn more about Anthropic
Size
50 employees
Industry
Founded
2019

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