Corporate Counsel

Jobtailor; Arlington (VA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) match

Unlimited PTO

100% medical, dental, and vision premiums coverage

Job summary

Cape is looking for an experienced Corporate Counsel to join our team in Arlington, Virginia. This role will involve owning the legal needs across the company, including managing external counsel and navigating regulatory spaces. Ideal candidates will have a JD from an accredited law school and 3-8+ years of legal experience.

You'll work directly across federal, enterprise, and consumer business lines. If you're excited about practicing law with a focus on privacy and technology, we want you to help build something great!

Qualifications

• 3-8+ years of legal experience with a mix of law firm training and startup experience.
• Ability to learn quickly about new areas of law.
• Skill in operating with ambiguity across functions.

Responsibilities

• Own legal needs across the company including interactions with regulatory bodies.
• Act as primary legal contact for internal stakeholders.
• Manage outside counsel and legal processes.

Skills

Legal experience

Regulatory knowledge

Negotiation skills

Communication skills

Education

JD from an accredited law school

Job description

About Cape

Cape is America’s privacy-first mobile carrier. Our mission is to be a force for good in global wireless. Cape was founded in 2022 by people who believe privacy is a fundamental right, not a luxury to be traded away. Our journey began when our founder recognized a critical vulnerability in our modern world: everyone relies on the same stagnant cellular infrastructure and legacy systems that track our every movement, monitor and profile our connections, and lose and sell our personal data.

Instead of accepting the status quo, we decided to fix it. National security professionals, journalists, parents, and everyone in between can stay connected and have privacy.

We didn’t just build a layer on top of old tech; we built America’s most private and secure mobile carrier from the ground up. By building our own network from scratch, we are able to design and build a suite of privacy and security features that no other carrier on the planet can offer.

Today, Cape provides our secure network to consumers, businesses, and government agencies alike. We closed our Series C in March 2026, and we are scaling rapidly, with the goal of giving people back control of their most personal information.

The Team

At Cape, we are the architects of a privacy-centric movement that is just getting started. We are relentless builders, constantly innovating at the edge of what’s possible in telecommunications. We operate on a foundation of high trust and high expectations. As a member of our team, you will collaborate with world‑class engineers, architects, and visionaries, and work across organizational lines to solve "impossible" problems and deliver mission‑critical results for our users every single day.

The Role (also the Mission)

As our first in-house lawyer, this role is for someone who thrives at the intersection of law and model development - a builder with sharp instincts who is steady under ambiguity. You want to practice across a wide range of substantive areas, with real stakes, and with the latitude to make judgment calls.

You’ll work directly across our business lines, including federal, enterprise, and consumer, navigating regulated spaces, government contracts, IP, commercial contracts, AI, employment, and everything in between. You’ll manage a lean but high-quality roster of outside counsel, direct strategy and execute, and provide actionable guidance to our internal teams. If your version of a great legal career means breadth, autonomy, and the chance to build something from scratch, this is it.

The Corporate Counsel will be a key member of Cape’s Internal Operations team, enabling Cape to move at maximum velocity. You'll be the first dedicated lawyer on our team, reporting directly to our Head of Operations (a JD holder) helping to establish a legal function that scales.

In this role you will:

• Own legal needs across the company, spanning interactions with regulatory agencies, government and commercial contracts, employment matters, and IP risks.
• Serve as the primary legal point of contact for internal stakeholders across Engineering, Product, Business Development, and Operations - acting as a true mini‑GC for the business.
• Establish, scale, and manage Cape’s internal legal processes, templates (eg MSAs, NDAs), and compliance frameworks (eg FCC, state licensing).
• Build and manage a curated outside counsel network, directing external lawyers on complex matters and deciding when and how to engage them.
• Partner with our government contracts team and outside counsel on FARS/DFARS, contract formation, teaming agreements, and compliance questions as we execute on defense programs.
• Professionalize how Cape thinks about legal risk - establish processes and frameworks where none currently exist.
• Work closely with leadership on corporate matters, partnerships, and transactions as the business scales.

Are you the candidate we are looking for? (Requirements for the role) You have:

• JD from an accredited law school and active bar membership in good standing. Typically requires 3-8+ years of legal experience, ideally with a mix of top‑tier law firm training and early‑stage/growth startup experience.
• A genuine interest in getting conversant in new areas - you don't need to walk in knowing government contracts or telecom regulation, but you need to be the kind of lawyer who gets up to speed fast and earns the trust of engineers, sales professionals, and outside specialists alike.
• The instincts of a builder: you're comfortable being the first person to own something, and you'd rather figure it out than wait for a playbook.
• Comfort operating with ambiguity and across functions - you're as effective in a room with engineers as you are with outside counsel.
• A long‑term interest in a broad, general practice - whether that means GC one day or just continuing to do interesting work across a wide range of areas.

VP of Engineering

Cape’s VP of Engineering is our head builder. Our product is complex and growing, as are our ambitions in the wake of a recent, successful Series C fundraise. And the engineering team you will lead is unlike any ever assembled in the telecommunications space in terms of talent, creativity, and work ethic. They are up to the challenge, and with your leadership will truly change the game in privacy, security, and resilience for cellular connection.

The VP Eng is responsible for growing, steering, and motivating an engineering organization capable of scaling with the company — developing leaders, establishing clear goals and operating rhythms, and creating an environment where engineers can do the best work of their careers. And the right candidate probably can’t resist putting their hands on the keyboard for part of their day as well.

The VP Eng serves as the company’s technical face in senior level meetings with government customers and the C‑Suite of security‑forward enterprises.

Along with the rest of the leadership team, the VP Eng works with the CEO to develop and execute the company’s strategy. In this context, the VP must be a relentless builder, a fierce advocate for the engineering team, and a collaborative steward of the company’s direction. The VP Eng brings engineering perspective to company‑level decisions, translates business and technical strategy into an executable engineering roadmap, and ensures that the team is resourced, structured, and focused to deliver against it. This role is based out of our NYC office and reports to our founder and CEO John Doyle.

Outcomes:

A Killer Engineering Organization

• The engineering team attracts and retains exceptional talent
• We are the most AI native telecom in the world
• Engineers have clear goals, accountability, and opportunities to grow into senior technical and leadership roles
• Engineers feel deep ownership over their work and the systems they build
• Teams operate with strong engineering discipline, thoughtful code review, and a focus on long‑term maintainability

Highest-Quality Delivery

• Engineering consistently delivers for our customers with clear planning, realistic but aggressive timelines, and strong execution
• Product, business development, and engineering operate in tight alignment, with clear priorities and exceptional outcomes
• Teams ship high-quality software with a strong focus on reliability, performance, sustainability, and security

Strong Cross-Functional Partnership

• Engineering is a trusted partner to Business Development, Product, Design, Security, and Operations
• Technical tradeoffs are communicated clearly to leadership and stakeholders

Qualifications:

• 9 years experience, at least one startup or growth tech company
• Impeccable technical chops
• 3 years of people leadership, including hiring, promoting, and performance management. Have mentored at least one direct report to become a successful lead
• Genuine excitement about both privacy and defense use cases (they turn out to be the same use case)
• Clear written and verbal comms

Nice to haves:

• Telecommunications or network experience
• Security, privacy, or defense background
• Existing security clearance or willingness to get one

Compensation:

We offer competitive compensation that is geo-adjusted based on your location, along with meaningful equity so you share in the value you help create. Salary range for this role in Washington, DC is $210,000-$250,000 depending on experience and interview performance.

Our benefits include:

• 401(k) match
• Unlimited PTO
• 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision premiums for you and your dependents
• 12 weeks paid parental leave (for all parents, no waiting period)
• Stipends for
  • Family-forming needs
  • Gender-affirming care

Our Culture & Values

• We hire excellent people, give them outsized responsibility, and trust them to execute. Every person at Cape has a proven track record of tackling hard problems and winning.
• We believe that personal privacy and national security are not at odds, and that they can be reconciled through strong technology.
• We believe companies exist to build awesome things and take care of the people who build them, so we offer top‑tier healthcare, 401(k) matching, and a generous vacation policy that our team actually uses to recharge.
• We believe that a stronger company and a better product are built by people from all walks of life. We hire without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, disability, or Veteran status. If you are great at what you do, you belong here.

How to apply

Click the link below to apply.

We reserve the right to make use of any unsolicited resumes received from outside recruiting agencies and / or individual recruiters without being responsible for payment of any fees asserted from the use of unsolicited resumes.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin, and without regard to disability or status as a protected veteran, or any other status protected by law.