Director, Product Counseling Hybrid - San Francisco

vercel.com; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 270,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Vercel is seeking a Senior Counsel to support product innovation and legal compliance in San Francisco. As part of the legal team, you will provide essential legal guidance throughout the development lifecycle, enabling cutting-edge product initiatives while ensuring responsible risk management. The ideal candidate will have over 8 years of experience, including significant product legal experience at a software company, and a deep understanding of cloud services and SaaS practices. The compensation range is between $270,000 and $300,000.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of legal experience, including 4+ years in a software company.
• Experience counseling product and engineering teams through the development lifecycle.
• Ability to communicate legal concepts clearly, especially under time pressure.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with EPD teams to balance innovation and risk management.
• Identify and drive resolutions on privacy and regulatory issues.
• Draft and maintain scalable process templates for product shipping.

Skills

Product legal counseling

Cloud services understanding

Risk assessment and mitigation

Communication under pressure

Education

J.D. from an accredited law school

California Bar admission

Job description

About Vercel:

Vercel gives developers the tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. As the team behind v0, Next.js, and AI SDK, Vercel helps customers like Ramp, Supreme, PayPal, and Under Armour build for the AI-native web.

Our mission is to enable the world to ship the best products. That starts with creating a place where everyone can do their best work. Whether you're building on our platform, supporting our customers, or shaping our story: You can just ship things.

About the Role:

We are looking for an experienced, technical, and business-minded Senior Counsel to enable Vercel’s product innovation and shipping velocity. You will partner closely with Engineering, Product and Design (”EPD”), Security, and other cross-functional teams to provide all aspects of legal support throughout the product development lifecycle, while also building out processes and programs as a foundational member of the Legal team. This is a senior individual contributor role that focuses on product counseling, and may also support commercial transactions from time to time. This position reports to the VP of Legal. This role is based in SF where we have a 3 day/week in-office requirement.

What You Will Do:

• Partner closely with EPD teams to enable cutting-edge product initiatives, balancing innovation and speed with responsible risk management and customer trust.
• Identify and drive resolution of issues related to privacy, data security, AI, platform safety, marketing, competition, intellectual property, and other legal and regulatory areas.
• Help translate evolving laws and market expectations into practical, actionable guidance.
• Work with cross-functional teams to build scalable processes and draft/maintain templates that allow Vercel to ship faster and smarter over time.
• Engage on special projects and provide legal support to sales, partnerships, procurement, M&A, and other teams as needed, particularly in transactions where nuanced product knowledge is critical.

About You:

• Admitted to the California Bar or eligible for Registered In-House Counsel exception and in good standing.
• 8+ years of legal experience, including 4+ years of product legal experience at a software company.
• Significant experience counseling product and engineering teams through the product development lifecycle from conception to launch and advising on the legal and regulatory aspects of product development in the software industry.
• Strong understanding of cloud services and general SaaS, PaaS, IaaS business practices and relevant global regulatory requirements.
• Able to quickly form and convincingly communicate a point of view, under time pressure and with imperfect information.
• Loves being a generalist and avoids silos. Will take on additional responsibilities and explore subjects outside of your core expertise where no job is too big or too small.
• Strong judgment and risk-assessment and mitigation skills, adapting legal requirements in creative and pragmatic ways.
• Can independently manage and negotiate technology agreements with customers, technology partners, and technology vendors.
• Prefers fast-paced, highly variable environments, with a proven track record of building new or improving existing processes at other hyper-growth companies.
• Enjoys mentoring and advising Legal teammates regardless of formal reporting lines.

Bonus If You Have:

• Computer science degree or technical background in software engineering for the web.
• Experience with commercial transactions, intellectual property, open source, platform safety
• Used Vercel’s products and services.

The San Francisco, CA base pay range for this role is $270,000-$300,000. Actual salary will be based on job-related skills, experience, and location. Compensation outside of San Francisco may be adjusted based on employee location. The total compensation package may include benefits, equity-based compensation, and eligibility for a company bonus or variable pay program depending on the role. Your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process.

Vercel is committed to fostering and empowering an inclusive community within our organization. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Vercel encourages everyone to apply for our available positions, even if they don't necessarily check every box on the job description.