Senior Legal Counsel — AI Startup

River AI; Iowa; Vor Ort; USD 330.000 - 380.000; Vollzeit

Benefits dieser Stelle

Health insurance

Unlimited PTO

Equity compensation

Zusammenfassung

River AI is seeking a Legal Counsel to serve as the company’s second attorney. The role spans commercial, product, corporate, employment, and regulatory work for a frontier AI startup with a fast growth trajectory.

You will partner with founders and leaders, drafting broad templates and guiding product and data policies. You will work on-site in Palo Alto, advising across engineering, research, and GTM, and help scale legal operations while leveraging AI to automate repetitive tasks.

Qualifikationen

• J.D. from an accredited law school and active membership in the California bar (or eligibility to register as in-house counsel in California).
• 6+ years of combined experience at a top law firm and in-house at a high-growth technology company, with significant ownership of product, commercial, corporate or other legal subject matter expertise.
• A first-principles thinker: comfortable being the first point of contact on unfamiliar legal questions, forming an informed view quickly, and knowing when to call in a specialist.
• Strong drafting and negotiation skills, with the judgment to give crisp, risk-calibrated, business-forward advice rather than memos.
• Discretion and sound judgment handling sensitive matters and information; you build trust across the company.
• Genuine enthusiasm for technology and AI, with fluency in modern software and AI tooling and a habit of using it to work faster and better.
• Clear communicator in writing and in person, able to make complex legal issues legible to non-lawyers.
• Able to work full-time on-site in Palo Alto to support a fast-growing startup's needs.
• Have plenty of fuel to run at a fast-paced start-up.

Aufgaben

• Serve as a primary legal advisor to the business, partnering directly with founders and leaders across engineering, research, product, people, and go-to-market, and support financing rounds.
• Draft, negotiate, and close a high volume of commercial agreements end-to-end - compute/infrastructure, SaaS, licensing, vendor, partnership, and customer agreements - and build the templates and playbooks that let the company scale.
• Provide product counseling on AI/ML offerings from design through launch, including terms of service, data licensing and provenance, open-weight model releases, privacy, and IP strategy.
• Advise on employment matters across the employee lifecycle - offers, equity, contractor/EOR arrangements, workplace policies, and sensitive investigations - in close coordination with the People team.
• Track and interpret the fast-moving AI regulatory landscape (federal, state, and international) and translate it into practical guidance and compliance programs.
• Manage outside counsel efficiently, knowing what to handle yourself and when and how to lift.
• Build the legal function itself: put better processes and AI tooling in place, and drive issues to resolution.

Kenntnisse

Drafting & negotiation

Regulatory/AI expertise

Written & verbal communication

First-principles thinking

AI tooling proficiency

Cross-functional collaboration

Ausbildung

J.D. from accredited law school

Active California bar or in-house CA eligibility

Tools

Carta

Jobbeschreibung

River AI is seeking a Legal Counsel to serve as the company’s second attorney. The role spans commercial, product, corporate, employment, and regulatory work for a frontier AI startup with a fast growth trajectory.

You will partner with founders and leaders, drafting broad templates and guiding product and data policies. You will work on-site in Palo Alto, advising across engineering, research, and GTM, and help scale legal operations while leveraging AI to automate repetitive tasks.