Commercial Counsel

Alembic
San Francisco HQ, US
On-site

Who this role is best for

A natural match if you have experience in high-growth tech companies and negotiating enterprise SaaS agreements.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with experience building commercial legal functions from scratch in high-growth tech environments
    — “If you want to build a commercial legal function at a Series B company and have it be visibly, unambiguously yours”
  • Individuals with a strong background in data protection and AI regulatory compliance
    — “Real fluency in data protection and security contracting: GDPR, CCPA, DPAs, sub-processor chains, security addenda”
  • Professionals comfortable with cross-functional collaboration and direct involvement in deal execution
    — “You’ll be the single legal point of contact on every deal, and the reason deals close on time”

Things to consider

  • This role requires a high level of autonomy and ownership, not just execution of existing processes
    — “If you want a defined slice of a twelve-lawyer department, this isn’t it”
  • The position demands a hands-on, flexible approach with shifting priorities and responsibilities
    — “priorities shift with the business, and the scope of this seat will keep growing”

How to stand out

  • Highlight your experience in creating contracting processes and templates, not just closing deals
    — “We care more that you made a contracting motion faster than that you papered a famous transaction”
  • Emphasize your ability to negotiate enterprise-level agreements with Fortune 100 procurement teams
    — “Lead negotiation of master agreements, order forms, DPAs, security exhibits and NDAs with Fortune 100 customers and their procurement organizations”
  • Showcase your ability to own end-to-end deal execution and act as the primary legal contact
    — “You’re the single legal point of contact on every deal, and the reason deals close on time”
  • Position yourself as a proactive builder of legal infrastructure in fast-growing environments
    — “You’ll be drafting the template, choosing the CLM and running the deal, often in the same afternoon”
Pace · SteadyCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • Led negotiation of master agreements and order forms
  • Created templates for standard terms
  • Structured and negotiated reseller agreements
Typical background
5-9 years in commercial and technology transactions

Skills & requirements

Required

Commercial ContractingEnterprise Deal NegotiationData ProtectionAI Regulatory ComplianceLegal Drafting

Preferred

Strategic TransactionsPartnership StructuringInfrastructure Procurement

Stack & domain

Commercial ContractingEnterprise Deal DeskMaster AgreementsOrder FormsDpasSecurity ExhibitsNdasFortune 100 CustomersProcurement OrganizationsReseller AgreementsCo-sell AgreementsSI AgreementsStrategic Alliance AgreementsInfrastructure ContractsData ProtectionAi-regulatory PostureGDPRCCPASub-processor ChainsAI RulesFinancingStrategic TransactionsDiligenceContract WorkLeadershipCollaborationProblem-solvingCommunicationTeamworkTime ManagementFeedback IncorporationCommercial Legal FunctionSeries B CompanyEnterprise SaasData AgreementsFortune 100 ProcurementSecurity TeamsAI Regulations

About the role

Original posting from Alembic via Ashby

ABOUT US

Alembic is the pioneering Causal AI platform. We help the world’s largest enterprises move past correlation to prove what actually drives business outcomes — the question marketing and growth teams have never been able to answer with confidence. Fortune 100 companies including Nvidia, Delta Air Lines, and Mars use Alembic to make multimillion-dollar decisions on trusted, causal evidence.

We’re backed by a $145M Series B from WndrCo (founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg), Jensen Huang, Joe Montana, Prysm Capital, and Accenture. Our models run on our own NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD built on Grace Blackwell infrastructure — one of the fastest private supercomputers in the world. (We’ve melted GPUs getting here.)

ABOUT THE ROLE - COMMERCIAL COUNSEL

Legal at Alembic is not a review queue. Our Patent Attorney sits in the codebase with the scientists. Our Commercial Counsel sits in the room where deals get done — on both sides of the table.

We’re looking for a Commercial Counsel to own Alembic’s commercial contracting end to end. You’ll report to our Head of Corporate Legal and be the person Sales, Finance, Partnerships, Security and Infrastructure come to when something needs to move.

If you want a defined slice of a twelve-lawyer department, this isn’t it. If you want to build a commercial legal function at a Series B company and have it be visibly, unambiguously yours, keep reading.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

  • Own the enterprise deal desk. Lead negotiation of master agreements, order forms, DPAs, security exhibits and NDAs with Fortune 100 customers and their procurement organizations. You’re the single legal point of contact on every deal, and the reason deals close on time.
  • Build the playbook. Create the templates, fallback positions and escalation paths that let Sales self-serve on standard terms — so Legal becomes a speed advantage rather than the last gate before signature.
  • Paper the partnerships. Structure and negotiate reseller, co-sell, SI and strategic alliance agreements, including with partners who are also investors and customers.
  • Secure the stack. Serve as legal lead on the infrastructure behind our causal engine — compute and capacity, colocation, hardware procurement, data licensing and the vendors who support it — and keep supplier terms aligned with the commitments we’ve already made to customers.
  • Defend the data. Own the data-protection and AI-regulatory posture that enterprise security reviews live or die on: GDPR, CCPA, DPAs, sub-processor chains, and the emerging AI rules our customers are already asking about.
  • Support what’s next. Partner with the Head of Corporate Legal on financing and strategic transactions, and on the diligence and contract work that follows them.

WHAT WILL HELP YOU SUCCEED

  • A JD and active membership in good standing of at least one US state bar — California preferred, or eligible to register as in-house counsel here.
  • 5–9 years in commercial and technology transactions, with substantial in-house time at a high-growth technology company. Big-law training plus an in-house tour is the classic shape.
  • A track record negotiating enterprise SaaS and data agreements against Fortune 100 procurement and security teams — unsupervised, and without losing the deal.
  • Real fluency in data protection and security contracting: GDPR, CCPA, DPAs, sub-processor chains, security addenda. Our platform runs on our customers’ proprietary data. This is not a side issue here.
  • Evidence you’ve built process, not just closed deals. We care more that you made a contracting motion faster than that you papered a famous transaction.
  • A plain-spoken style. You can tell an AE what the risk actually is in two sentences, and tell an executive when the answer is no.
  • Helpful, not required: compute, colocation, data centre or hardware procurement agreements; export controls; exposure to venture debt or equipment financing; selecting and rolling out a CLM.

THE ROLE IS RIGHT FOR YOU IF

  • You’ve built a commercial legal function before — or you’ve watched someone else build one and have strong opinions about what they got wrong.
  • You want proximity to the thing being sold. Our customers make eight- and nine-figure decisions on Alembic’s output, and the contracts reflect exactly that.

WHY YOU MIGHT BE EXCITED ABOUT ALEMBIC

  • The whole motion is yours. Customer, partner, vendor and infrastructure paper in one seat, reporting straight to the Head of Corporate Legal. No queue, no six layers of review.
  • Deals that genuinely matter. Fortune 100 companies including Nvidia, Delta Air Lines and Mars make multimillion-dollar decisions on our output. The agreements you negotiate carry real weight on both sides of the table.
  • A category being created in front of you. Causal AI is new, and so are the contracting questions it raises — data rights, model outputs, attribution, what a vendor can responsibly warrant. You’ll write first drafts the market hasn’t seen yet.
  • Infrastructure most lawyers never touch. We run our own NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD built on Grace Blackwell infrastructure — one of the fastest private supercomputers in the world. Someone has to paper the compute behind it.
  • Series B momentum, real ownership. Meaningful equity at a Series B company that’s raised $145M, with proven product-market fit and Fortune 100 traction.

WHY YOU MIGHT NOT BE EXCITED

  • If you want a defined lane inside a built-out legal department, this isn’t it. You’ll be drafting the template, choosing the CLM and running the deal, often in the same afternoon.
  • You prefer inheriting process to defining it. Much of what this role needs simply doesn’t exist yet.
  • You prefer static over dynamic. We’re onsite five days a week in SoMa, priorities shift with the business, and the scope of this seat will keep growing. We have real paying customers and a playbook for growth, and we still move at startup speed at Series B scale.

Source: Alembic careers (Ashby)

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