Founding Legal Counsel

What You’ll Do

• Act as day-to-day legal partner to founders and leadership across company decisions

• Draft, review, and negotiate commercial agreements including customer, partner, vendor, and research collaborations

• Support hiring and people operations including employment agreements, contractor arrangements, policies, and compliance

• Manage intellectual property matters including NDAs, invention assignment, open source use, and coordination with outside patent counsel

• Handle corporate governance, board materials, subsidiary setup, equity administration, and related documentation

• Support fundraising and financing processes alongside outside counsel

• Advise on regulatory and operational risk related to robotics, autonomy, data, and deployment in the physical world

• Develop practical policies and lightweight processes that enable speed while maintaining compliance

• Coordinate and manage outside counsel across corporate, employment, IP, and regulatory matters

• Provide clear, actionable guidance to non-legal teams

• Operate as a hands-on generalist and take ownership of issues end-to-end

What You’ll Bring

• J.D. and active membership in the California State Bar

• Experience at a law firm or in-house role covering multiple legal domains

• Comfort operating as a generalist across corporate, commercial, employment, and IP matters

• Familiarity with French law and regulatory frameworks, particularly as they relate to corporate structure, employment, or cross-border operation

• Experience negotiating technology, commercial, or partnership agreements

• Ability to translate legal risk into practical business guidance

• High ownership, autonomy, and sound judgment

• Ability to work closely with engineers, researchers, and operations teams

• Comfort operating in a fast-moving and ambiguous environment

• Strong written and verbal communication

• Ideally: Experience at a startup or high-growth technology company

• Ideally: Experience supporting venture financings and board governance

• Ideally: Familiarity with hardware, robotics, autonomy, or AI companies

• Ideally: Experience building legal processes from zero and scaling them over time

• Ideally: Experience working with intellectual property in Asia