Head of Legal

Inferact; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) match

Job summary

Inferact seeks its first in-house counsel to lead and scale the company’s legal function in a fast-moving AI infrastructure setting. You will draft, negotiate, and close complex commercial agreements while coordinating with leadership across product, engineering, GTM, and operations.

You will own handling open-source licensing issues, regulatory considerations, and governance, partnering with outside counsel as needed to move matters efficiently and ensure compliance.

Qualifications

• J.D. or equivalent with bar admission in at least one jurisdiction.
• 6+ years of legal experience at technology/infrastructure/AI companies or top law firms serving tech clients.
• Experience building or scaling a legal function from 0 to 1 or acting as the first in-house lawyer.
• Strong commercial contracting experience: drafting, negotiating and closing enterprise/ cloud/vendor licensing deals.
• Experience managing outside counsel efficiently with clear ownership.

Responsibilities

• Own internal legal matters and coordinate with leadership across product, engineering, GTM and ops.
• Lead development of Inferact's in-house legal function and work with outside counsel as needed.
• Navigate open-source licensing, vendor agreements, and regulatory considerations for AI infrastructure.

Skills

J.D. degree

Active bar admission

Legal experience

Contract negotiation

Open-source licensing

Education

J.D. or equivalent

Tools

Contract management systems

Open-source governance tools

Job description

Overview

Inferact's mission is to grow vLLM as the world's AI inference engine and accelerate AI progress by making inference cheaper and faster. Founded by the creators and core maintainers of vLLM, we sit at the intersection of models and hardware, a position that took years to build.

About The Role

We're looking for our first in-house legal hire to give Inferact greater leverage across a growing set of legal workstreams. This is a hands‑on, high-impact role for an experienced technology lawyer who can personally execute on commercial agreements while serving as the primary point person for all legal matters at the company.

This hire will provide immediate in‑house legal capacity and, in short order, build out and lead Inferact's legal function. You will own key matters internally, coordinate complex workstreams with outside counsel, maintain cross‑functional alignment across the organization, and help the company navigate frontier questions in open source LLM inference space. You will work closely with leadership, product, engineering, GTM, and operations teams.

Skills And Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

• J.D. or equivalent, with active bar admission and good standing in at least one relevant jurisdiction.
• 6+ years of legal experience at a technology company, infrastructure or AI business, or a top law firm advising sophisticated tech clients. Prior GC experience is not required.
• Experience building or scaling a legal function from 0 to 1, or operating as the sole or first lawyer supporting a fast‑growing company.
• Strong commercial contracting experience: able to independently draft, negotiate, and close enterprise customer, cloud and compute vendor, partnership, and technology licensing agreements.
• Experience managing outside counsel efficiently, with clear internal ownership and a bias toward keeping matters moving.
• Hands‑on execution mindset—comfortable personally drafting, reviewing, and negotiating in a technically complex, fast‑moving startup.
• Strong business judgement, with the ability to translate legal complexity into clear, practical tradeoffs for leadership and engineers.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience at or advising companies in AI inference, model serving, GPU cloud, or developer infrastructure.
• Working fluency in open‑source software licensing and the legal mechanics of running a company alongside a community‑driven open‑source project.
• Familiarity with the regulatory issues facing AI infrastructure companies, including data privacy, export controls on compute and models, and emerging AI‑specific regulation.
• Experience negotiating with hyperscalers, hardware vendors, and enterprise customers with demanding security, compliance, and data‑handling requirements.
• Track record of building lightweight self‑service resources, templates, and playbooks so product, engineering, and go‑to‑market teams can move without waiting on legal.

Bonus points if you have:

• Served as first or sole in‑house counsel, or as a senior lawyer with broad ownership, at an AI infrastructure company
• Deep experience with open‑source business models (open core, managed offerings, enterprise licensing, etc.) or companies that steward a major open‑source project.
• Handled the full generalist range at an early‑stage startup: financings, equity and employment, immigration, and corporate governance.
• Built strong working relationships with top law firms while keeping accountability and execution speed in‑house.

Logistics

Location: San Francisco, CA (On‑site / Hybrid). Will consider remote in the US for exceptional candidates.

Compensation: Compensation determined based on background, skills, and experience. Offers include competitive base salary & meaningful equity.

Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas on a case‑by‑case basis.

Benefits: Inferact offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits as well as 401(k) company match.