Job Description

Role Summary:

Giga.ai is seeking a senior commercial lawyer to own and scale all customer-facing legal operations. This role will serve as the primary legal partner to Sales, enabling revenue growth while managing risk in a fast-moving AI company.

As the company’s first legal hire, this role combines hands-on contract negotiation with building the foundational commercial legal processes, templates, and policies required to support scale. The ideal candidate is commercially minded, pragmatic, and comfortable operating independently in an environment with minimal existing legal or HR infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities:

Commercial Contracting & Sales Support

• Own negotiation and execution of customer-facing agreements, including: MSAs, Order Forms, SaaS agreements, pilots, and enterprise contracts
• Partner directly with Sales leadership to structure deals that close efficiently while protecting the company’s interests
• Provide clear, practical guidance to Sales on contract terms, fallback positions, and deal risk
• Serve as escalation point for complex or high-value deals

Legal Strategy & Risk Management

• Identify, assess, and manage legal risk across commercial transactions, including:
• Data usage and AI-related provisions
• IP ownership and licensing
• Liability, indemnity, and limitation of liability
• Balance speed and risk tolerance appropriate for a growth-stage company
• Advise leadership on legal implications of new products, pricing models, and go-to-market strategies

Foundational Legal Infrastructure

• Create and maintain standard contract templates, playbooks, and negotiation guidelines
• Design lightweight legal processes that support speed and consistency (no bureaucracy for its own sake)
• Implement basic contract lifecycle management practices (even if manual at first)
• Establish internal approval thresholds and escalation paths

Cross-Functional Advisory

• Act as de facto legal advisor on issues touching:
• Privacy, data protection, AI governance
• Vendor agreements
• Partnerships and strategic relationships
• Note that employment-adjacent issues in coordination with leadership will be handled by outside counsel
• Translate legal concepts into business-friendly guidance for non-lawyers

External Coordination

• Manage outside counsel as needed, including scoping work and controlling costs
• Evaluate when external legal spend is necessary versus handled internally

Qualifications:

• JD and active license to practice law in at least one U.S. jurisdiction
• 7–12+ years of experience in commercial contracting, preferably in: B2B SaaS, technology, or AI-adjacent companies and In-house roles closely aligned with Sales or Revenue teams
• Proven experience negotiating complex enterprise agreements independently
• Strong judgment and comfort making decisions without extensive precedent or supervision
• Ability to operate as a one-person legal function in a startup environment

Preferred Experience

• Prior experience as a first or early legal hire
• Exposure to AI, data, or analytics-driven products
• Experience building contract templates, playbooks, or sales enablement materials
• Familiarity with privacy frameworks (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) as they relate to SaaS sales

Operating Style

• Commercially oriented and solutions-driven
• Direct, practical, and comfortable pushing back when necessary
• Bias toward enabling the business rather than blocking it
• Comfortable with ambiguity and incomplete information

Success Metrics

• Reduced contract cycle times
• Increased consistency in negotiated terms
• Improved Sales confidence in legal guidance
• Clear, scalable legal foundations that do not slow growth

Giga.ai has exclusively engaged Kerwin Associates to conduct this search. Any resumes sent directly to Giga.ai will be forwarded to Kerwin Associates. If interested in this role, please contact Anne Kerwin Payne ([email protected]) and Jamie Walsh ([email protected]) at Kerwin Associates.

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