General Counsel

Aestudio; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 225,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Free lunches

Weekly knowledge-sharing talks

Team retreats

Equity participation

Job summary

AE Studio, a leading applied AI firm, seeks its first in-house lawyer in Los Angeles. You’ll scale the legal function as we expand into grants, government collaborations, and productized, outcome-based work. You’ll work with executives to shape terms, protect IP, and manage governance, NDAs, and employment matters.

You’ll need a JD with CA bar, strong commercial and tech/AI experience, sound judgment, and a collaborative mindset to partner with outside counsel and engineering teams.

Qualifications

• JD from an accredited law school with active California bar membership.
• Strong strength in commercial transactions and technology/AI work.
• Experience across IP, nonprofit, grants, and government.
• Judgment, adaptability, and business instinct valued over tenure.
• Integrity and discretion with sensitive matters.

Responsibilities

• Scale and shape the legal function as growth occurs.
• Help win and deploy government research grants.
• Negotiate and structure productized/outcome-based deals.
• Manage NDAs, vendor agreements, employment, and governance.
• Collaborate with outside counsel and translate business goals into legal structure.
• Drive alignment and fast, high-ownership decision making.

Skills

Business acumen

Negotiation

Communication translation

Judgment & discretion

Tech/AI familiarity

Process orientation

Strategic partnering

Owning outcomes

Outside counsel collaboration

Adaptability

Education

Law degree (JD)

Active CA bar membership

Job description

AE Studio is a ~160-person, fully bootstrapped applied AI company. We've spent over a decade building and shipping production AI for clients in finance, defense, aviation, healthcare, and education, including generating millions per week in additional revenue for a major airline and building the AI-enabled school of the future, where students are performing in the top 1% nationally. Without outside investors we are able to choose where the money goes, and we put it into alignment research through the AI Alignment Foundation, a nonprofit we founded to scale this work.

We're running a DARPA seedling on alignment and control, our policy team engages directly with the government on AI alignment, and our work has been featured many times in the Wall Street Journal. We collaborate with researchers at Anthropic, Princeton University, University College London, Redwood Research, and MATS. The research team is 25 people and growing.

About this role

We need our first in-house lawyer. Demand and our own expansion have outpaced what we can handle today: research grants closing, government and national-security work opening up, university and lab partnerships forming, and a shift toward outcome-based commercial work. All of it carries real legal weight and business urgency, and today it sits largely on the founders' shoulders, backed by excellent outside counsel.

You'd start by learning what already works here and helping scale it, then improving and adapting it as new opportunities arise. The timing is the real opportunity: we're 10 years in, established and growing fast, and right at the start of a major inflection point. You'd be here during a step change.

What you'll work on

A handful of things are happening at once, and the legal side of each is the core of the role.

• We're shifting the commercial business toward outcome-based and productized work. That moves delivery ownership to us, meaning stronger margins and tighter focus on outcomes; you'd shape these deal terms.
• Major research grants are coming in to fund our foundational AI Alignment work, and you'd help us win them and put them to work.
• Government agencies, research labs, and universities are coming to us to collaborate. These partnerships are often first-of-their-kind, and you'd help shape them.
• Our government work is expanding fast, opening a category of contracts and programs that are new ground for us and full of upside.

Intellectual property runs through all of it, and there's real opportunity in how we own, license, protect, and publish it. Underneath sit the steady in-house workstreams: NDAs and vendor agreements, employment, corporate governance, and the processes that let legal scale.

About you

We're after a strong generalist more than a specialist: solid fundamentals, judgment from real experience, and the ability to pick up new areas fast and get good at them. Day to day you'd work alongside executives, making the key calls and scaling the function.

Specifically, someone with:

• Real business sense. You read the gap between strict interpretation and what's sensible, see where the real risk sits, and give practical guidance.
• A negotiator who stays flexible but takes care of us, and knows which terms are worth fighting for.
• A clear translator in both directions: turn complex business dynamics into plain strategy, and translate business goals into the right legal structure.
• No-job-too-small instincts. A one-page NDA and a government contracting strategy are both yours, handled without ego.
• A technical background, or deep experience with technology and technical people. You're comfortable around AI and can hold your own with engineers.
• An AI-native way of working. You use the latest AI tools in your own legal practice to move faster and go deeper, and you do it with care for confidentiality, accuracy, and privilege.
• Strong organizational and process skills and a systems mind, with an ownership mentality for building.
• Creativity and the hunger to find the best answer, including approaches most lawyers wouldn't reach for.
• A real partnership with outside counsel: when to bring them in, how to brief them, and how to get the most out of them.
• Alignment with how we operate. We move fast, take high-variance bets, care a lot about getting things right, and own our outcomes.

Requirements

• JD from an accredited law school, with active, good-standing membership in the California bar (open to options for exceptional out-of-state candidates).
• Required: real strength in commercial transactions and in technology/AI work.
• Ideal: experience across IP, nonprofit, grants, and government. You'll touch all of these here, and growing into some is fine.
• Enough experience to have real judgment, usually substantial in-house time and/or strong firm training. We weigh judgment, adaptability, and business instinct as heavily as years or a prior GC title.
• Complete integrity and discretion with sensitive matters.
• Comfort in a fast, ambiguous, high-ownership environment.

Logistics

• We are open to either full-time to start or starting on a fractional/consulting basis and convert to full-time as the work and fit develop.
• Ideally Los Angeles; remote considered for the right person, with regular travel to HQ.

Compensation & Benefits

• Good-faith base salary range (full-time) is $225,000 - $300,000, plus variable compensation and equity participation. If starting as an initial fractional engagement, compensation is a mutually agreed rate or retainer based on scope.
• Remote-first with flexible schedules, health insurance, free lunches at the office, weekly knowledge-sharing talks, and an annual team retreat. Regular performance-based raises and a diversified employee equity program.