Legal Operations Lead

Hud; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Lunch & dinner in office

Holiday break

Equinox membership

401k

Commuter benefits

Unlimited AI tokens

Job summary

HUD is building infrastructure to create RL training data and evals for frontier AI agents, plus a marketplace for partners. You’ll own the end-to-end legal operating system, draft and negotiate MSAs, SOWs, data licenses, NDAs, and vendor agreements, and improve templates to speed issues while managing risk.

This is a hands-on, operator-focused role: work with legal tech and AI to automate workflows, while keeping human review for judgement-heavy matters.

Qualifications

• Experience in legal operations, contracts management, commercial operations, transactional legal work, or a combination of these at a fast-growing technology company
• Strong experience drafting, reviewing, and negotiating commercial technology agreements, with the judgment to distinguish routine issues from matters that require specialist legal advice
• Comfort working with legal technology, workflow tools, and AI, and an interest in using them to make legal work materially faster and more scalable
• Strong commercial judgment and the ability to balance legal risk against speed, customer needs, and business priorities
• Excellent written communication, attention to detail, and the confidence to push back constructively on sophisticated customers, vendors, and internal stakeholders

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end operating system for legal at HUD, including intake, prioritization, contracting workflows, approvals, escalation paths, document management, and outside-counsel coordination
• Draft, review, and negotiate routine commercial agreements across buyers, data vendors, and other partners, including MSAs, SOWs, data licenses, SLAs, NDAs, vendor agreements, and other bespoke arrangements
• Build and continuously improve templates and negotiation playbooks so recurring issues such as data rights and usage restrictions can be handled quickly and consistently
• Identify opportunities to automate or streamline high-volume legal workflows using software and AI, while preserving appropriate human review for judgment-heavy issues
• Establish clear rules for what should be handled internally, what can be standardized or automated, and what should be escalated to founders or outside counsel
• Manage outside counsel strategically, including scoping work, preparing issues efficiently, controlling legal spend, and ensuring external lawyers are used primarily for high-value or specialist questions

Skills

Legal operations

Contracts management

Transactional legal work

Business operations

Tools

Legal tech tools

AI in legal workflows

Job description

About HUD

HUD is building infrastructure to create RL training data and evals for frontier AI agents, as well as a marketplace to sell these to frontier labs through the HUD marketplace. Our platform is used by frontier labs, Fortune 500 companies, and startups. We’ve raised $16M from top VCs and were YC W25.

About the role

We’re looking for a Legal Operations Lead to build and own the systems, processes, and commercial frameworks enable HUD to move more quickly as our volume and complexity of agreements grows.

This is not a traditional in-house counsel role. We’re looking for someone who combines strong legal and contracting judgment with an operator’s instinct for systems, tooling, and leverage. You should be comfortable handling a contract directly one day and redesigning the process so it barely needs manual intervention the next.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end operating system for legal at HUD, including intake, prioritization, contracting workflows, approvals, escalation paths, document management, and outside-counsel coordination

• Draft, review, and negotiate routine commercial agreements across buyers, data vendors, and other partners, including MSAs, SOWs, data licenses, SLAs, NDAs, vendor agreements, and other bespoke arrangements

• Build and continuously improve templates and negotiation playbooks so recurring issues such as data rights and usage restrictions can be handled quickly and consistently

• Identify opportunities to automate or streamline high-volume legal workflows using software and AI, while preserving appropriate human review for judgment-heavy issues

• Establish clear rules for what should be handled internally, what can be standardized or automated, and what should be escalated to founders or outside counsel

• Manage outside counsel strategically, including scoping work, preparing issues efficiently, controlling legal spend, and ensuring external lawyers are used primarily for high-value or specialist questions

Experience

You may be a good fit if you have:

• Experience in legal operations, contracts management, commercial operations, transactional legal work, business operations, or a combination of these at a fast-growing technology company

• Strong experience drafting, reviewing, and negotiating commercial technology agreements, with the judgment to distinguish routine issues from matters that require specialist legal advice

• Comfort working with legal technology, workflow tools, and AI, and an interest in using them to make legal work materially faster and more scalable

• Strong commercial judgment and the ability to balance legal risk against speed, customer needs, and business priorities

• Excellent written communication, attention to detail, and the confidence to push back constructively on sophisticated customers, vendors, and internal stakeholders

Strong candidates may also have:

• Legal training, including experience at a law firm or in-house legal team, but prefer operating and building systems over practicing law as a traditional counsel

• Experience building or scaling legal operations, contract management, or a deal desk from an early stage

• Experience with data licensing, IP-intensive transactions, marketplaces, or other businesses where contractual rights are closely tied to the product

• Experience managing outside counsel

• Early-stage startup experience with ability to work independently in fast-paced environments

We prioritize technical aptitude and learning potential over years of experience. Motivated candidates are encouraged to apply even if they don't meet all criteria.

Team & company details

• Team Size: ~25 people currently, mostly full-time in-person, but some remote.

• Our team: Our team includes 4 International Olympiad medalists (IOI, ILO, IPhO), serial AI startup founders, and researchers with publications at ICLR, NeurIPS, etc.

• Company stage: We have 8 figures in funding and high revenue growth. We’re scaling profitably and quickly to meet very strong demand.

Logistics

• Employment: Full-time.

• Location: On-site only, for now. You can join the team in the San Francisco Bay Area or Singapore offices.

• Visa Sponsorship: We provide support for relocation and visas for strong full-time candidates to the US or Singapore.

• Timeline: Applications are rolling. The process is 2 technical interviews and a 2-3 day work trial.

What we offer

• Competitive compensation

• 100% covered top-of-the-line medical, dental, and vision from Blue Shield of CA (US employees)

• Lunch and dinner when you’re in the office

• Company-wide holiday break (Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day) on top of PTO and paid holidays

• Other perks including an Equinox membership, 401k, and commuter benefits (US employees)

• Unlimited* access to tokens for ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor, etc. *By unlimited, we mean no one on our token usage leaderboard has ever hit a limit. So we have no idea what the limit is.

Due to high volume, we may not actively respond to every application, but feel free to contact us at [e-mail] or elsewhere if we missed your application!