Senior Legal Counsel

Orbital; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Orbital Copilot is seeking a Senior Legal Counsel to own and shape the legal function as we scale in the US and UK. This embedded role partners with product, commercial, and leadership to move fast, draft and negotiate contracts, protect IP, and align legal with business goals.

You’ll work with internal teams, external counsel, and security standards while building processes, playbooks, and a proactive legal function that enables growth.

Qualifications

• Prior in‑house legal experience at a scaling SaaS company.
• Pragmatic, commercially minded, and able to move at commercial pace.
• Experience partnering with product, sales, and leadership teams.

Responsibilities

• Partner with global sales on contracts and NDAs to close deals quickly and fairly.
• Review vendor contracts with a legal lens and guide teams on terms.
• Field legal questions across the business and know when to bring external counsel.
• Build a proactive partnership with product to surface legal risks before features ship.
• Lead significant legal change projects, upgrades to terms, and supplier transitions.

Skills

In‑house experience

SaaS

Commercial contracts

Cross‑functional

Tools

AI tools

Job description

We're on a mission to make real estate transactions smarter, faster, and friction‑free. Real estate is the world’s largest asset class, yet the legal processes and tools behind it remain slow, manual, and underinvested. Lawyers must review dense documents line by line and piece together information across silos, all while clients demand faster, more transparent due diligence. That's where we come in. Orbital Copilot is the AI assistant built exclusively for commercial real estate law. Developed with former practising real estate lawyers, it accelerates complex due diligence by up to 70% while delivering legal‑grade precision. We’ve just raised a $60m SeriesB to accelerate our UK/US expansion. We're trusted by leading firms like Goodwin and BCLP to remove the busywork so legal teams can focus on what they do best: applying sharp legal judgment, delivering standout client service, and getting deals over the line faster. Working at Orbital means joining a team that’s reimagining how real estate transactions get done - moving fast, working collaboratively, and giving people the ownership to make a real impact from day one.

The Role

Orbital has been scaling fast, and our legal function needs to keep up. We currently work with external legal counsel across UK and US matters, and we're now looking for a Senior Legal Counsel to bring on in a FTE capacity, to own our legal function now, and shape how it looks in the future as we grow — bringing structure, strategy, and sharp judgment to everything from commercial contracts to IP protection.

This isn't a fractional legal reviewer or an external‑style adviser. It's an embedded business partner — someone who sits alongside product, commercial, and leadership teams to give legal a seat at the table before decisions are made, not after.

You’ll own what Orbital commits to customers, what the company needs to protect itself against, and how legal shows up when the business is moving fast. You’ll be critical to transforming our legal function from a reactive resource into a proactive partner, by deeply understanding the business and building the processes, playbooks and team required to function in an optimal way for our success. You’ll report into our Head of Operations, who currently coordinates our external legal counsel and will work closely with you on legal operations, process, and resourcing as you embed into the business.

Ideally, you will be based in NYC and happy to spend a few days a week in office with us to feel fully embedded in the business.

What You'll Own

Operational Legal Counsel

The embedded legal support you provide will keep the business moving forwards.

• Partner with the global sales teams as they negotiate commercial contracts (standard contracts for our products, NDAs, DPAs)- you will be the legal partner to them, ensuring we secure customers quickly, fairly and in a sustainable way.
• Partner with individuals and teams across the business around vendor contracts - ensuring contracts are reviewed with a legal lens and teams understand what they are signing up for when bringing on new vendors.
• Field legal questions from across the business- knowing when you can advise directly, and when external specialist legal advice is required. These will include queries from the People team (eg. HR and employment law), the Finance team (eg. stock option schemes, cap table management etc), the InfoSec team (eg. data protection).

Strategic Legal Counsel

The forward‑looking work that protects where Orbital is going, not just where it is.

• Build a proactive partnership with product — understanding the roadmap so legal risks are surfaced before features ship, pricing models change, or new suppliers come on board, not after.
• Anticipate where the business is heading — understanding Orbital's growth goals well enough to spot the legal risks and gaps on the horizon and get ahead of them before they become problems.
• Lead significant legal change projects — terms revamps, new commercial frameworks, major product or supplier transitions — work that touches multiple teams and needs a legal owner who can drive it end‑to‑end, not just advise on it.

Legal Function Building

We want legal to be a function the business reaches for proactively. A big part of this role is building the infrastructure to make that possible.

• Train the wider team on where legal starts and ends, to contain escalations and ensure they are targeted and appropriate.
• Build a trusted and valued function, embedded across leadership of the business.
• Partner with Operations to ensure the legal function is operating efficiently, using AI and technology to scale with the company.
• Resource planning for the future team we might need and management of any external counsel required as extra support.

What We're Looking For

Prior in‑house legal experience at a scaling SaaS company is essential. Law firm experience alone is not sufficient — we need someone who has operated inside a fast‑moving business and understands what that demands.

You know the difference between what matters and what doesn't. In‑house legal at a scale‑up requires pragmatism: picking your battles, moving at commercial pace, and being genuinely helpful rather than a blocker.

You’ve been the person in the room who makes things move, not slow them down — pragmatic, commercially minded, and easy to work with.

A background in both private practice and in‑house is common in this role, but the in‑house experience is what we'll weigh most heavily.

Why This Might Not Be For You

You prefer advising from a distance. This role is genuinely embedded - you’ll be proactively in the room with product, commercial and leadership, shaping decisions before they’re made, not after.

You’re most comfortable with a clearly defined scope and existing playbooks. We need someone who sees what needs doing, decides what warrants legal input and moves the function forward without waiting to be asked.

Why Join Orbital

Shape the legal function - the playbook, the process, the infrastructure are yours to design.

Real strategic influence: you'll be at the table on IP, HR, pricing models, and commercial terms — not just executing others' decisions.

Genuine momentum: $60m SeriesB, doubling headcount, expanding across two continents.

Work alongside a fast‑moving leadership team that values legal as a business enabler, not just a risk function.

Security is everyone's responsibility at Orbital. We ask all team members to follow our security policies, complete regular awareness training, and handle sensitive data with care in line with ISO27001 standards.

At Orbital, we’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We especially welcome applications from people who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. Even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we'd still love to hear from you.

Security is everyone's responsibility at Orbital. We ask all team members to follow our security policies, complete regular awareness training, and handle sensitive data with care in line with ISO27001 standards.

At Orbital, we’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We especially welcome applications from people who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. Even if you don't meet every single requirement, or if the right role isn't listed yet, we'd still love to hear from you.

This hiring range is a reasonable estimate of the base pay range for this position at the time of posting. Pay is based on several factors, which may include job‑related knowledge, skills, experience, and business requirements.