Commercial Contracts Manager

Nooks; United States; Remote; USD 123,000 - 136,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Yearly bonus structure and equity

Premium health coverage

401(k) employer contribution

Flexible time away

Job summary

Nooks seeks a skilled contracts professional to own the commercial contract cycle, reviewing, redlining, and negotiating agreements with third parties from draft to signature. You will drive playbook development with outside counsel and align deals with playbook positions, reporting to the VP of Growth as a full-time IC.

In this role you will handle amendments, renewals, and template maintenance, train the Growth team, and ensure routine terms are settled in sales conversations.

Qualifications

• Five or more years reviewing, redlining, and negotiating commercial agreements with substantial independence.
• Working command of core commercial terms: liability limits, indemnification, insurance, termination, service levels, and payment.
• Track record negotiating directly with customer legal and procurement teams, holding positions while keeping deals moving.
• Ability to understand business requirements and translate into terms in the agreement.

Responsibilities

• Review, redline, and negotiate commercial customer agreements, including service agreements, NDAs, and teaming agreements, against approved playbook positions.
• Decide non-material terms within guidelines and elevate material terms to the VP of Growth with a recommendation.
• Draft and negotiate amendments, extensions, and renewals of executed commercial agreements, keeping changes consistent with current playbook positions.
• Draft the commercial contract playbook and maintain templates and playbook with updated positions.

Skills

Commercial negotiation

NDAs

Contract drafting

Playbook development

Templates & playbooks

CLM system

Legal collaboration

Defense contracts

Independent work

Pricing terms

Education

J.D. or Paralegal certification

Tools

CLM software

Job description

Nooks is pioneering Classified-Infrastructure-as-a-Service (CIaaS) — designing, building, and operating Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs) and other secured, classified environments for the defense and national security community. We work with the agencies, contractors, and mission-driven organizations that keep the nation safe, delivering the physical infrastructure that makes classified work possible. We’re growing fast, operating across multiple markets, and building a company that takes both the mission and the business seriously.

About the Role

You own the contract cycle for Nooks’ commercial contracts: reviewing, redlining, and negotiating agreements with third parties from first draft through signature, including amendment and revisions as needed. Nooks needs these agreements to reach signature faster, without conceding terms under deadline pressure. You deliver both by drafting the contracts playbook with outside counsel and working every deal against it. You report to the VP of Growth, take legal direction from outside counsel, and work as a full-time individual contributor.

At Nooks, we move fast. While you’ll have clear ownership over your core responsibilities, startup life means priorities can shift. We’re looking for a proactive problem-solver who is comfortable with ambiguity and ready to lean in wherever the team needs them most to drive us forward.

Key Responsibilities

Commercial Negotiation

• Review, redline, and negotiate commercial customer agreements, including service agreements, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), and teaming agreements, against approved playbook positions.
• Decide non-material terms within guidelines and elevate material terms, such as price and duration, to the VP of Growth with a recommendation.
• Draft and negotiate amendments, extensions, and renewals of executed commercial agreements, keeping each change consistent with current playbook positions.

Playbook and Enablement

• Draft the commercial contract playbook, setting standard, fallback, and walk-away positions for approval by the VP of Growth and outside counsel.
• Maintain commercial templates and the playbook, proposing updated positions when negotiation patterns or counsel guidance show a standard no longer holds.
• Train the Growth team on playbook positions so routine terms get resolved in the sales conversation rather than in your review queue.

Deal Support and Reporting

• Prepare contract content for proposals, including terms, exceptions, and representations and certifications, and contribute broader proposal content when a pursuit requires it.
• Maintain a complete record of every commercial agreement you handle through a contracts lifecycle management tool, including executed versions, approvals, key dates, and renewal triggers.
• Track and report contract cycle time and playbook deviations to the VP of Growth, identifying which terms or steps slow deals.
• Review all commercial customer, vendor, and supplier agreements for the company.

The Skillset

• Five or more years reviewing, redlining, and negotiating commercial agreements with substantial independence.
• Working command of core commercial terms: liability limits, indemnification, insurance, termination, service levels, and payment.
• Track record negotiating directly with customer legal and procurement teams, holding positions while keeping deals moving.
• Ability to understand the business requirements and translate that into terms in the agreement
• Experience drafting or maintaining contract templates or playbooks with defined standard and fallback positions.
• Plain-language writing that explains contract risk to non-lawyers and frames clear escalation recommendations.
• Comfort working independently, while soliciting direction from Legal, Growth, and Government delivery functions across the business.
• J.D. or Paralegal certification, highly preferred.
• Experience contracting with defense contractors or other cleared-industry customers.
• Experience managing a Contracts process using a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system or structured contract repository, a plus.

• Yearly bonus structure and equity ownership, premium health coverage, 401(k) employer contribution, flexible time away.

Eligibility & Clearance

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States. An active security clearance is preferred but not required.

You work independently your agreements cover across every location and lifecycle phase. No commercial contract playbook exists today, so you build the standard first and then hold every deal to it. Expect occasional travel for company events and select customer negotiations.

What Success Looks Like in This Role

An approved commercial contract playbook governs every customer negotiation, and the Growth team resolves routine terms without routing them to you. Commercial agreements reach signature on a predictable cycle time that you track and report, and deals no longer stall in contract review. Deviations from approved positions are rare, documented, and escalated before signature rather than discovered after. Every executed commercial agreement, amendment, and renewal sits in a complete record with key dates tracked. Leadership relies on you to tell them, before a deal closes, exactly which terms Nooks is accepting and why.

Cross-Functional Expectations

You partner daily with the Growth team and negotiate directly with customer legal and procurement teams. You execute on outside counsel’s legal direction and bring material terms to the VP of Growth for decision. Pricing, government contracts, regulatory flow-down clauses, and security classification requirements sit with other owners; you route them rather than resolve them.

Salary Range for all departments

Salary Range

$123,000 - $136,000 USD

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey.Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in Nooks’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.