IP & Innovation Technical Specialist

X Development, LLC; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 184,000 - 273,000; Full time

Job summary

X is Alphabet’s moonshot factory seeking an IP & Innovation Technical Specialist to accelerate early-stage technologies. You will act as a bridge between the legal and engineering teams, evaluating pitches, mapping white space, and shaping robust patent pipelines before prototypes exist.

The role requires a technical background, USPTO registration, and 5+ years in patent prep/prosecution with deep-tech portfolios. Mountain View base with high-velocity, collaborative work.

Qualifications

• Technical undergraduate degree required.
• US Patent Office registration (Agent/Attorney) preferred.
• 5+ years in patent preparation, prosecution, and IP landscaping.
• Experience building patent portfolios for early-stage deep-tech projects.
• Ability to translate engineering breakthroughs into patent strategy.

Responsibilities

• Lead Early Pipeline de-risking and shape-shifting activities with engineering teams.
• Drive patent-informed innovation harvesting to identify technical differentiators.
• Conduct IP landscaping and white-space analysis for strategic focus areas.
• Support global IP strategy and asset mapping to create a competitive moat.
• Serve as the bridge between engineering, product, and legal teams to accelerate moonshots.
• Create and manage invention disclosures and collaborate with outside counsel for drafting.
• Perform initial FTO screenings to support risk assessments in undefined tech spaces.
• Collaborate on AI-powered tooling and prototyping for IP discovery.

Skills

Patent strategy

Cross-functional collab

Technical breadth

Strategic thinking

Tech translation

Education

Technical undergraduate degree

Tools

IP analytics tools

Job description

About X: X is Alphabet’s moonshot factory with a mission of inventing and launching moonshot technologies that could someday make the world a radically better place. We are a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs who build and launch technologies that aim to improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people. Our goal: 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problems, not just 10% improvement. We approach projects that have the aspiration and riskiness of research with the speed and ambition of a startup. As an innovation engine, X focuses on repeatedly turning breakthrough-technology ideas into the foundations for large, sustainable businesses.

About the Team: In this role, you will sit within the Legal team but embed deeply with X’s Early Pipeline teams. As the primary technical-legal liaison, you will be the connective tissue between these two world-class organizations.

The X Legal team works on the most exciting legal issues since our moonshots require creative and proactive guidance. We challenge ourselves to think big and differently in providing solutions and strategies for our clients—at X, the legal team can be audacious too! Our team aims to accelerate X while demonstrating values of respect, wellbeing, creativity, integrity, and continued development.

X’s Early Pipeline team has one goal: creating and incubating X’s next moonshots. They are a dynamic team of creative and collaborative engineers, innovative entrepreneurs, and scientists that focuses on identifying and de-risking ideas. They develop the foundations upon which groundbreaking products and businesses are built.

About the Role: X is looking for a deeply curious, technically versatile, and highly strategic IP & Innovation Technical Specialist to accelerate our earliest-stage breakthrough technologies. This role acts as the ultimate bridge between legal strategy and engineering reality. Working hand-in-hand with our Senior IP Counsel and the Early Pipeline teams, you will live at the frontier of innovation—evaluating early moonshot pitches, uncovering uncharted technological "white space," and mapping out leapfrog opportunities often before a single line of code is written or a prototype is built.

In this role, you will help create and implement unique and innovative IP strategies for X’s exciting new businesses and technologies . The IP portfolios you help develop will have a scope stemming from the innovations X produces and a value extending far beyond the immediate products and services X launches. Your contributions here will be a key part of demonstrating a return on investment for these projects. This role is distinct from standard IP roles because it focuses on “de-risking” radical technologies that don’t yet have a defined market.

This is not a traditional, back-office patent prosecution role. It is a highly collaborative, high-velocity position designed for a registered patent professional who wants to step directly into the engine room of a moonshot factory. You will use your deep technical acumen and patent expertise to de-risk radical concepts, shape the foundational boundaries of new projects, and translate raw engineering breakthroughs into robust, high-value patent pipelines that protect X’s long-term future.

How you will make 10X impact:

• Early Pipeline De-Risking & Shape-Shifting: Partner directly with Early Pipeline teams to assess the viability of incoming moonshot pitches. Dig deep into enabling concepts during the conception and maturing phases to actively help teams define project scope and technical parameters.
• Patent-Informed Innovation Harvesting: Lead regular brainstorming and high-touch IP harvesting sessions across early and mature project teams. Actively translate core engineering innovations into clear technical differentiators, streamlining raw ideas into a well-defined, value-add patent pipeline aligned with product roadmaps.
• Advanced IP Landscaping & Market Signals: Lead, perform, and direct IP landscaping and white space analysis to identify strategic focus areas for moonshots using patents, non-patent literature, and public discourse. Use these findings and market signals to guide project leads and the IP Counsel on critical decisions regarding market entry or asset transfer.
• Strategic IP Portfolio Development: Support the IP Counsel in the design and execution of a global IP strategy that aligns with the specific commercial goals of a project. Review and analyze internal and external patent assets to assess scope, perform gap-filling exercises, and help build a competitive “moat” around a project's core technologies.
• The Legal-to-Engineering Bridge: Serve as a proactive, high-credibility liaison between engineering, product, and legal teams. Demystify the IP process by instituting regular patent roundtables and delivering technology-led IP trainings, empowering X’s technologists to capture high-quality, robust inventions early.
• Foundational Asset Creation: Synthesize highly complex, early-stage technical concepts into formal Invention Disclosure Forms (IDFs). Manage the initial lifecycle of these disclosures, assist inventors with prioritization, and partner closely with Outside Counsel to drive high-quality external drafting and prosecution.
• Actionable Freedom to Operate (FTO) Screening: Conduct initial technical clearings, prior art analysis, and landscape screenings to provide foundational data for FTO risk assessments in cutting-edge, often undefined or uncharted technology spaces.
• Next-Gen IP Tooling & AI Prototyping: Collaborate with core software teams to develop and test cutting-edge, AI-led Moonshot discovery software. Build prompt repositories and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for subject-matter-expert-led white space identification to extract latent value from existing and pending IP assets.

What you should have:

• Education: Technical undergraduate degree in a rigorous engineering or scientific discipline (e.g., Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Aerospace, Life Sciences, or Materials Science).
• USPTO Registration:Admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a Patent Agent or Patent Attorney, with an active USPTO registration number.
• Experience:5+ years of experience in patent preparation, prosecution, and IP landscaping, ideally gained within a top-tier law firm technical specialist/patent agent program or a high-growth deep-tech corporate environment.
• Early Portfolio Lifecycle Experience:Hands-on experience building, scaling, and managing patent portfolios for early-stage deep tech startups, university tech-transfer offices, or novel corporate R&D spin-outs.
• Technical Chameleon:Exceptional, broad technical literacy with the ability to rapidly pivot between a wide range of technical domains and assess IP potential across diverse technological frontiers.
• Elite Communication & Translation Skills:Demonstrated ability to go toe-to-toe with PhD-level researchers and world-class engineers, extract their core technical breakthroughs, and seamlessly translate them into actionable IP strategies while maintaining strong cross-functional relationships.
• Ambiguity Champion:Hands-on ability to make structured decisions with incomplete information and thrive with high levels of autonomy in a fast-paced, "fail-fast" scrappy start up environment.
• AI Tech-Forward Mindset:Ability and enthusiasm to leverage cutting-edge developments in AI and generative prompting to enable smarter, more efficient work processes and white space discovery.

It would be great if you also had these:

• Advanced Patent Analytics Expertise:Deep familiarity with modern patent analytics platforms (e.g., IPFolio, PatSnap, Anaqua, LexisNexis TotalPatent) and a strong enthusiasm for leveraging generative AI to automate white-space analysis and prompt engineering.
• Deep Tech Specialization:A solid technical understanding of artificial intelligence, robotics, physics, clean energy, biotechnology, bioinformatics, or related deep-tech domains.
• Startup Agility:A gritty, startup-oriented "roll up your sleeves" mindset—someone who is equally excited about defining high-level competitive landscapes as they are about digging into the fine details of a technical disclosure.
• Executive Presence:Experience effectively presenting complex technological landscapes and IP insights to senior management, business executives, and cross-functional technical teams.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $184,000 - $273,000 + bonus + equity + benefits. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process.

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits.

An Equal Opportunity Workplace

At X, we don't just accept difference - we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

This position is located in Mountain View, CA. Are you able to commute to the office and/or are you willing to relocate?*