Head of Legal

Develop Health; Menlo Park (CA); On-site; USD 308,000 - 342,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Direct access to CEO

Equity (early-stage)

Job summary

Develop Health Inc. is hiring our first in-house lawyer to own legal end-to-end as a hands-on practitioner, reporting to the CEO. For at least the first year you’ll be the sole lawyer, with outside counsel on specialist matters.

You’ll review stakeholder agreements, lead negotiations, build templates in Ironclad, and help scale a neutral platform serving PBMs, providers, pharma, payers and patients. This role emphasizes fast, compliant contracting and practical writing to enable rapid product

Qualifications

• You've owned commercial contracts end to end, in-house or as a company's go-to counsel.
• You see systems, not clauses.
• You find the yes. Propose a workable version instead of stopping at no.
• You build templates, triage and self-serve tools to avoid bottlenecks.
• You learn fast—quickly applying unfamiliar regulatory frameworks or business models.

Responsibilities

• Review stakeholder agreements side by side, fix inconsistencies and exposure you find.
• Take over review and redlining of contracts in flight; set turnaround times and escalation rules.
• Build our contract templates, playbooks and fallback positions in Ironclad.
• Lead negotiations as we add new stakeholders.
• Choose and manage outside counsel for corporate, regulatory, IP and employment work; lead the legal side of our next financing.

Skills

Commercial contracts

Systems thinking

Negotiation

Clear writing

Fast learner

Education

Admission to practice law in at least one US state

Tools

Ironclad

Job description

Develop Health is on a mission to use AI to radically accelerate access to life-saving medications. By automating complex, manual healthcare processes—like benefit verification and prior authorization— we've been growing rapidly and over the past couple of years have helped over 3.6 million patients!

We’re partnering with some of the largest pharmacy benefit managers and payers in the nation, revolutionizing how healthcare interactions occur by eliminating human delays and inefficiencies. Our small, elite team of founders and engineers have previously launched and exited successful healthcare startups including Rupa Health and Canvas Medical. We are now scaling rapidly following a major funding round.

About The role

Location: Menlo Park or San Francisco, on site 3 days a week. Reports to: CEO.

We're hiring our first in-house lawyer. Develop Health sits in the middle of PBMs, providers, pharma manufacturers, payers and the patients they all serve, and each of them relies on us to treat them fairly. Your job is to keep it that way: every contract we sign, every feature we ship and every service we offer pharma has to keep us a neutral party all sides can trust.

You'll report to our CEO and own legal end to end as a hands-on practitioner. For at least the first year you're the only lawyer, working with outside counsel on specialist matters.

Three things define success in this role:

1. The contracts fit together. You know our stakeholder agreements side by side, and nothing we agree with one party creates exposure with another.

2. Product ships fast and stays compliant. You work alongside product and engineering, find the version of an idea that works, and explain the one constraint that actually matters.

3. Legal scales without you in every deal. Templates, fallback positions and playbooks let sales and partnerships close standard deals on their own, and they know exactly when to bring you in.

What You'll Do

• Review our stakeholder agreements side by side, then fix the inconsistencies and older exposure you find.

• Take over review and redlining of contracts in flight, and set turnaround times and escalation rules.

• Build our contract templates, playbooks and fallback positions in Ironclad.

• Lead negotiations as we add new stakeholders.

• Choose and manage outside counsel for corporate, regulatory, IP and employment work, and lead the legal side of our next financing.

What You'll Bring On Day 1

• You've been the lawyer a business relied on. You've owned commercial contracts end to end, in-house or as a company's go-to counsel.

• You see systems, not clauses. You notice how a term in one deal changes what's possible in another.

• You find the yes. When something is risky, you propose the version that works instead of stopping at no.

• You build so you're not the bottleneck. Templates, triage and self-serve tools come naturally to you.

• You learn fast. You've picked up an unfamiliar regulatory framework or business model quickly and put it to work.

• Clear writing. Your memos and redlines are short, plain and easy to act on.

• Admission to practice law in at least one US state.

You don't need a healthcare background. Referral-fee rules, platform neutrality and data rights show up in many industries, and we care more about how quickly you learn than what you already know.

Bonus Points

• Healthcare regulatory experience: fraud and abuse, HIPAA, or pharmacy and PBM regulation.

• Legal work at a marketplace or platform company with many types of customers.

• You've been a company's first legal hire before.

This Might Not Be The Right Fit If

• You want to build a team right away. This is an individual-contributor role for at least the first 12 months.

• You want to litigate. If we're sued, we hire litigators. We need your judgment on when and how to elevate.

• You want to specialize. Tax, securities and patent work go to outside specialists; you manage those relationships.

• You need a lot of structure. There isn't much yet, and building it is the job.

What We Offer

• Competitive base salary ($308,000–$342,000) plus meaningful early-stage equity.

• A direct line to the CEO and ownership of a function from day one.

• Work that directly speeds up access to medication for hundreds of thousands of patients.

If you want to build the legal foundation of a company that's changing how patients get their medications, we'd love to hear from you.