General Counsel

San Francisco Compute Company; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous equity grant

Visa sponsorships

401(k) match

Job summary

The San Francisco Compute Company is building a pioneering platform to de-risk multi-year GPU-offtake contracts and navigate fintech-compliance challenges in a rapidly evolving market. We are seeking a Senior Legal Counsel to shape the company’s legal strategy, ensure regulatory compliance, and guide governance and financing decisions.

You will draft, review and negotiate complex agreements, manage IP protection, supervise outside counsel and budgets, and collaborate with product teams to

Qualifications

• Qualified attorney with JD and bar admission (CA preferred).
• Experience drafting and negotiating complex contracts in fintech/regulatory environments.
• Proficiency with data privacy and financial services compliance requirements.
• Ability to lead governance, risk, and crypto/AI-related regulatory discussions.

Responsibilities

• Develop and oversee the company’s legal strategy aligning with business goals.
• Ensure compliance with financial, regulatory, data privacy laws (AI, AML/KYC, GDPR).
• Advise on corporate governance, fundraising, and investor relations including equity and debt financing.
• Draft, review, and negotiate contracts including partnerships, vendor agreements, and licensing.
• Provide legal counsel on product development to mitigate risk and ensure compliance.
• Manage risk and crisis responses, including litigation and regulatory inquiries.

Skills

Legal strategy

Regulatory compliance

Contract negotiation

Corporate governance

Risk management

IP protection

Education

Juris Doctor (JD)

Tools

Contract management tools

DocuSign

Job description

We're building the company which will de-risk the largest infrastructure build-out in history.

When people finance GPU clusters, the datacenters housing them, and the infrastructure powering them, they need "offtake" - meaning someone has signed a contract to lease the cluster for a period of time before its even built.

Financing a GPU cluster is inherently risky, since margins are thin and volumes are huge. Lenders don't want to take on the risk that cluster developers can't repay their loan, and cluster developers really don't want to risk not selling their cluster. As a result, risk is offloaded to the customer using fixed-price long-term contracts.

If you don't mitigate this customer risk, there's a bubble. This isn't SaaS anymore - application layer companies sign multi-year contracts for computer and inference, but sell to customers on monthly subscriptions. If you mess up a purchase, it's game over: a minor shift in your revenue growth rate might mean the difference between profit or bankruptcy. But what if companies could exit their contract by selling it back to the market?

Otherwise, as AI scales, compute only becomes available to folks who can effectively take on that risk. A 2-person startup in a San Francisco Victorian can't realistically sign a 5-year take or pay contract on $100m supercomputers. But they may be able to buy the month of liquidity that someone else sold back.

So that's what we make: a liquid market for GPU offtake.

About The Role

• Develop and oversee the company’s legal strategy, ensuring alignment with business objectives
• Ensure compliance with all applicable financial, regulatory, and data privacy laws (e.g., AI sales restrictions, AML/KYC, potential future CFTC regulation, GDPR etc.)
• Advise on corporate governance, fundraising, and investor relations, including equity and debt financing transactions
• Draft, review, and negotiate a wide range of contracts, including partnerships, vendor agreements, and licensing deals
• Provide legal counsel on product development to ensure compliance with various regulations and mitigate legal risk
• Manage risk and crisis response, including potential litigation, regulatory inquiries, and disputes
• Lead interactions with regulatory bodies and stay ahead of emerging laws and regulations affecting the fintech space
• Oversee intellectual property protection, including patents, trademarks, and trade secrets
• Develop and implement policies, training, and best practices to maintain legal and ethical integrity across the organization
• Manage external counsel and legal budgets efficiently

Benefits

• Generous equity grant
• Team members are offered a competitive salary along with equity in the company
• Visa Sponsorships
• Yes, we sponsor visas and work permits
• Retirement matching
• We match 401(k) plans up to 4%
• Medical, dental & vision
• We offer competitive medical, dental, vision insurance for employees and dependents and cover 100% of premiums
• Time off
• We offer unlimited paid time off as well as 10+ observed holidays
• Parental leave
• We offer biological, adoptive, and foster parents paid time off to spend quality time with family
• Daily lunch
• We cover lunch daily for employees
• Unlimited office book budget
• You can buy as many books for the office as you want

The San Francisco Compute Company is committed to maintaining a workplace free from discrimination and harassment.

We make employment decisions based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, belief, national origin, social or ethical origin, age, physical, mental, or sensory disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, HIV status, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status including pregnancy, or any other status protected by law.

We welcome the opportunity to consider qualified applicants with prior arrest or conviction records. Our commitment to diversity includes hiring talented individuals regardless of their criminal history, in accordance with local, state, and federal laws, including San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance and California’s ban-the-box laws.