Senior Counsel, Real Estate

Fluidstack; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 325,000 - 450,000; Full time

Job summary

Fluidstack is building civilization-scale data center infrastructure and seeks a senior attorney with a real estate focus to structure, draft, and negotiate the full range of real estate transactions for our buildouts.

You will create standard form agreements, assemble a network of local counsel, and run complex negotiations end to end, balancing legal risk with speed. You’ll partner with site selection, development, finance, and delivery teams to keep deals moving.

Qualifications

• Active license to practice law in at least one jurisdiction.

Responsibilities

• Structure, draft, and negotiate real estate transactions for Fluidstack’s data center buildout.
• Create Fluidstack’s library of real estate form agreements and network of local counsel.
• Run complex negotiations with sophisticated counterparties end to end.
• Manage outside counsel across disciplines with rigor on scope, quality, and spend.
• Coordinate transactions cross-functionally with site selection, development, finance, and delivery teams.
• Advise business leaders as a strategic partner, anticipating issues and providing solutions.

Skills

Active law license

Lead drafting & negotiation

Decision making under pressure

Oversight of outside counsel

Clear legal communication

AI in legal work (bonus)

Job description

About Fluidstack

We exist to make humanity more free. For most of human history, you farmed or you starved. Technology gave people more time for the things they wanted to do, instead of things they had to do. Powerful AI will be the biggest lever for human choice we've ever built - but only if models are aligned with what humanity actually wants. There are groups building AI who don't share these goals. Whoever deploys frontier compute infrastructure fastest will decide whether AI expands human freedom or shrinks it.

About Fluidstack

We exist to make humanity more free. For most of human history, you farmed or you starved. Technology gave people more time for the things they wanted to do, instead of things they had to do. Powerful AI will be the biggest lever for human choice we've ever built - but only if models are aligned with what humanity actually wants. There are groups building AI who don't share these goals. Whoever deploys frontier compute infrastructure fastest will decide whether AI expands human freedom or shrinks it.

We're singularly focused on delivering 10 to 100s of GWs of compute faster than anyone else, rethinking every layer of the stack. We acquire power, design and build data centers, and operate them - with teams spanning hardware and software. Speed and scale are our key differentiators. Come be a part of building civilization-scale infrastructure for AI.

We hire people who care deeply about this problem space.

How We Operate

• Be a barrel. Full autonomy. Own things end to end, take on scope without being asked, no permission required to operate outside your core role.
• Insane urgency. We drive everything forward as fast as possible.
• Reason from first principles. Challenge every assumption. Zero analogy thinking, no egos, the best idea wins.
• Love of the game. The frontier of AI is the most interesting problem of our time. We put in long hours at high intensity to push the frontier forward.
• Build something that actually matters. If you're going to spend your time, spend it on something that matters to the world.

The Legal Team

Examples of key problems the team is working on

• Build the legal and compliance function from zero, for the largest compute buildout in history. No inherited playbook, no legacy team. The systems, standards, and team we build are the ones a company deploying gigawatts will run on for the next decade.
• Make legal a source of speed. We structure and close complex deals in weeks that typically take quarters. That only work when we calibrate risk from first principles of business enablement. Our job is judgment, applied fast enough that legal helps drive the deal across the finish line.
• Cover the entire legal surface with a lean team. A small team owns everything, and much of it involves business structures the market hasn’t seen before. You invent the solution with our business team.

Role Scope

• Structure, draft, and negotiate the full range of real estate transactions behind Fluidstack’s data center buildout, including purchase and sale agreements, build-to-suit and ground leases, real estate financing, tax incentives, title review and insurance, zoning and land use, easements, environmental matters, and restrictive covenants.
• Build the foundation for scale: create Fluidstack’s library of real estate form agreements and stand up the network of local counsel we need in each market.
• Run complex negotiations with sophisticated counterparties end to end, balancing legal risk against the speed our business demands.
• Manage outside counsel across substantive disciplines with rigor on scope, quality, and spend.
• Quarterback transactions cross-functionally with site selection, development, finance, and delivery teams so deals never stall.
• Advise business leaders as a strategic partner, anticipating legal and commercial issues before they arise and having solutions ready.

What We’re Looking For

The below is a starting point. We always make space for exceptional people, so if you don’t fit this role exactly, tell us where you would.

• You hold an active license to practice law in at least one jurisdiction and can meet admission requirements where you will practice.
• You’ve autonomously structured, drafted, and negotiated complex commercial agreements as lead attorney, against sophisticated counterparties, with sophisticated practice in areas that map directly to data center real estate development: land acquisition and disposition, build-to-suit and ground leasing, real estate finance, zoning and land use, construction, title and insurance, and similar.
• You’ve personally made sound, commercially pragmatic calls in ambiguous, high-stakes situations, and colleagues can point to deals where your judgment changed the outcome.
• You’ve overseen outside counsel across multiple disciplines and held them to a rigorous bar on scope, quality, and spend.
• You write and speak clearly enough to turn a dense legal issue into a decision and a next step for an executive or a counterparty.
• Bonus: A mix of law firm and in-house experience. Using AI to improve legal work and efficiency. In-house experience at a data center developer or cloud company.

We are committed to pay equity and transparency.

Fluidstack is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Fluidstack will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to applicable law.

Compensation Range: $325K - $450K