Title: Sr. Manager, Contract Lifecycle & Legal Operations
The Role
We are seeking an experienced and detail-oriented Sr. Manager, Contract Lifecycle & Legal Operations to join our Legal team. The Sr. Manager, Contract Lifecycle & Legal Operations will play a critical role in ensuring timely preparation, review, and management of all contract-related documentation; compliance with regulatory and project requirements, and effective coordination with internal and external stakeholders. The Sr. Manager, Contract Lifecycle & Legal Operations will drive efficient contract processing, execution, and tracking by the Legal team. The ideal candidate will have experience in the energy sector, a strong background in contract management, excellent organizational skills, and a passion for supporting renewable energy initiatives.
Key Responsibilities
• Contract Lifecycle Leadership: Own and oversee the end-to-end contract lifecycle, including intake, review coordination, approvals, execution, storage, renewal, and closeout for non-disclosure agreements, master service agreements, task orders, and other company agreements.
• Contract Review and Execution: Coordinate the review of complex contracts by routing provisions to appropriate stakeholders, consolidating comments, tracking issues to resolution, and shepherding final documents through execution.
• Legal Operations: Develop, document, and continuously improve Legal team workflows, service standards, intake procedures, approval paths, and operating processes to improve efficiency, consistency, and accountability.
• Contract Lifecycle Management Technology: Own the administration, optimization, and user adoption of contract lifecycle management and related legal technology platforms, including workflows, permissions, document libraries, data quality, and reporting.
• Templates and Knowledge Management: Partner with attorneys to maintain contract templates, clause libraries, playbooks, legal correspondence, policies, and centralized knowledge resources.
• Risk, Compliance, and Escalation: Support compliance with company policies and applicable requirements, identify contractual or process risks, and escalate legal or business issues to the appropriate attorney or stakeholder.
• Outside Counsel and Legal Spend: Administer outside counsel engagement and spending, including engagement letters, billing guidelines, invoice review, accruals, budget tracking, and spend reporting.
• Metrics and Reporting: Develop and maintain dashboards and performance metrics for contract volume, cycle time, renewals, obligations, legal spend, and other Legal team priorities; provide regular updates to senior management.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Serve as a primary operational partner to Development, Procurement, Finance, Operations, and other teams to support timely contracting and company-wide adherence to contracting procedures.
• Process Improvement and Change Management: Identify opportunities to standardize, automate, and simplify legal and contracting processes and lead implementation and adoption across the organization.
Qualifications
• Education: Bachelor's degree in business, legal studies, finance, operations, or a related field required. Paralegal certification, Certified Legal Manager credential, or other relevant professional certification preferred.
• Experience: Minimum of 7 years of progressively responsible experience in contract management, legal operations, commercial contracting, procurement, paralegal services, or a related field, including experience supporting an in-house legal department or similarly complex organization.
Soft Skills
• Leadership and Ownership: Demonstrated ability to independently own complex workflows, establish priorities, and drive work to completion.
• Business Judgment: Sound judgment in identifying risks, resolving operational issues, and determining when matters require attorney or executive escalation.
• Communication and Influence: Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders and drive alignment without direct authority.
• Operational Excellence: Highly organized, detail-oriented, and able to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced, evolving environment.
• Systems and Data Orientation: Comfort using technology, metrics, and reporting to improve visibility, consistency, and decision-making.
• Collaboration and Service: Collaborative, responsive, and practical approach to supporting internal clients and external partners.
• Adaptability and Initiative: Proactive problem solver who seeks feedback, asks thoughtful questions, and adapts effectively to changing business needs.
Preferred Qualifications
• Industry Experience: Experience in renewable energy, power, infrastructure, construction, project development, or another contract-intensive industry.
• Legal Operations Experience: Experience building or maturing legal operations processes within an in-house legal department.
• CLM and Legal Technology: Demonstrated experience implementing, administering, or optimizing a contract lifecycle management platform or related legal technology.
• Contracting Knowledge: Working knowledge of commercial contract terms and experience supporting agreements such as non-disclosure agreements, master service agreements, task orders, consulting agreements, procurement agreements, and construction-related contracts.
• Outside Counsel Management: Experience with legal budgeting, accruals, invoice review, billing guidelines, and outside counsel spend management.
• Reporting and Automation: Experience developing dashboards, metrics, standardized templates, workflow automation, or document-management solutions.
Employee Benefits
• The salary for this position is highly competitive and commensurate with experience.
• We offer competitive benefits, including unlimited paid time off, paid holidays, cell-phone stipend, 401K and a fully paid health benefits plan for employees, including Medical, Dental, and Vision.
