Senior Commercial & Product CounselYou'll own Firecrawl's commercial and product legal work end to end. Every enterprise deal, data-licensing agreement, and vendor relationship that gets signed here will run through you, and every product and engineering team shipping into new legal territory will come to you first. This is not a role where you review other people's paper and send back comments. You'll negotiate directly with counterparties, sit next to sales and BD while deals are live, advise engineers on data access and AI questions nobody has settled yet, and build the templates, playbooks, and processes that let the company move faster without taking on risk it shouldn't.
This is the second legal hire at Firecrawl. The General Counsel sets legal strategy, risk posture, and policy. You make it real and make it run. The questions are genuinely novel: who owns AI-generated output, what data access is permissioned and by whom, how liability works for infrastructure that other AI companies build on. Very few lawyers get to work on these this early.
Salary Range: $301,000-$324,000/year plus eligibility for up to $50,000 in semi-annual performance bonuses, totaling up to $100,000 annually.
Equity Range: Competitive equity - details shared during the process.
Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite)
Job Type: Full-Time
Experience: 5-8 years of sophisticated commercial, technology, or product counseling experience
Visa: Must be legally authorized to work in the United States. We're not able to sponsor visas right now, though that may change down the line.
What You'll Do- Negotiate enterprise customer agreements, data-licensing deals, vendor contracts, and partnership agreements, start to finish
- Serve as the legal partner sales and BD actually want in the room, not the one they route around
- Advise product and engineering directly on data access, privacy, AI, intellectual property, and the regulatory questions that come with all three
- Take on the novel and higher-risk matters: AI output ownership, permissioning, licensing structures nobody has standardized yet
- Build the contracting processes, templates, playbooks, fallback positions, and approval thresholds that let deals move without a lawyer in every loop
- Implement company policies and compliance programs, and make sure they actually run rather than sit in a doc
- Decide when a matter needs outside counsel, and manage that relationship tightly when it does
- Pick up whatever else the company needs legally as we grow, because early legal teams don't get to have narrow scopes
What We're Looking For- You've negotiated real technology agreements. Not reviewed them. Negotiated them, across the table, with a counterparty's counsel pushing back, and you've held the positions that mattered and conceded the ones that didn't.
- You drive things to done without supervision. The GC will hand you a direction, not a plan. You're the person who owns matters independently, exercises judgment on the calls that don't have a clear answer, and closes them out.
- You know exactly when to escalate. Real autonomy only works if your instincts are good about what you handle, what goes to the GC, and what needs a founder.
- You give business advice, not legal cover. Our teams need a recommendation and a risk read they can act on, not a memo listing every possible exposure. If your default answer is no, this will be frustrating for both of us.
- You work well with non-lawyers. Most of your internal clients are engineers and salespeople. They'll trust you if you're fast, clear, and unpretentious.
- You're an AI super user. Non-negotiable. You should already be using AI heavily in your own practice, and you should want to push it further than anyone has taken it in this profession. We'll give you room to try things that don't have a precedent.
- Membership in good standing in at least one U.S. state bar. Preferred: a J.D. from a T14 law school or comparable academic credentials, and prior experience at an Am Law 100 firm or a comparably sophisticated firm. Exposure to data licensing, privacy, IP, or data-access issues is a plus.
What We're NOT Looking For- A lawyer who runs commercial legal as a gatekeeping function and measures success by deals slowed down
- Someone who needs a fully staffed team, a CLM platform, and defined process before they can be effective
- A pure litigator or generalist looking to pivot into commercial work on the job
- Someone who wants strategy without implementation. This seat is both
A Note On PaceWe 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.
If you're a strong lawyer looking for an interesting escape from BigLaw, this is the one. It won't be boring, and you'll build skills at the absolute frontier of AI and the legal profession.
Benefits & PerksAvailable to all employees- Salary that makes sense - $301,000-$324,000/year plus eligibility for up to $50,000 in semi-annual performance bonuses, totaling up to $100,000 annually, 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/month for the gym, therapy, massages, or whatever keeps you human
- Learning & Development - Expense up to $1,000/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 spouse/kids) - no weird loopholes, just care that works
- Life & Disability insurance - Employer-paid short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance - coverage for life's curveballs
- Supplemental options - Optional accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and voluntary life insurance for extra peace of mind
- Doctegrity telehealth - Talk to a doctor from your couch
- 401(k) plan - Retirement might be a ways off, but future-you will thank you
- Pre-tax benefits - Access to FSAs and commuter benefits (US-only) to help your wallet out a bit
- Pet insurance - Because fur babies are family too
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 ProcessApplication Review - send us your resume and a short note on why this excites you. Tell us about a deal you owned, what you fought for, and what you gave up.
Intro Chat (~25 min) - a quick conversation to get to know each other before we go deep. What you've been working on, what drew you to Firecrawl, and what you're looking for. Time for your questions too.
Case Chat (~45 min) - we'll work through a real problem from our world, a data-licensing structure or an enterprise redline where the standard position doesn't fit, and talk through how you'd approach it. Come ready to think out loud. We care how you reason, not whether you know the market term.
Redline Exercise (paid, ~90 min): one scoped, realistic document. You mark it up and give us a short read on the two or three issues you'd actually escalate.
Founder Chat (~25 min) - Culture, pace, ownership, and how you like to work. Time for your questions too.
Decision - We move fast
If you want to build the commercial and product legal function for the infrastructure layer of AI, and do it before anyone has written the playbook, you should join us.
👉 Apply now.
