Head of Legal / General Counsel

Our client is a fast-growing, venture-backed SaaS company in the AI space, serving a large, global customer base. The business is fully remote with a distributed, global team.

The Role

You'll own the legal function day to day — hands-on, pragmatic, and commercially minded. As the senior legal voice in the company, you'll work directly with leadership on a broad mandate: keep deals moving, protect the business, and use good judgment about what to handle in-house versus when to bring in outside counsel. You'll start as the sole senior legal hire and build out the legal function as the company grows.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead commercial contracting — customer agreements, MSAs, DPAs, and vendor, partner, contractor, and consulting agreements — with fast turnaround and a commercial mindset that unblocks the business and flags only what truly matters.

• Manage disputes and demand letters — assess exposure, set strategy, and coordinate with outside counsel and insurers.

• Handle corporate matters — the insurance program (D&O/E&O renewals and claims), corporate governance, entity management, and support for financing or M&A activity as it arises.

• Coordinate employment law matters across the US, UK, Canada, and other jurisdictions with international contractors — agreements, background checks, terminations, and employer-of-record arrangements.

• Protect intellectual property and trademarks, including handling infringement matters.

• Partner closely with the compliance/privacy function on data protection matters (e.g., GDPR/CCPA, DPAs), serving as the legal backstop on compliance issues.

• Manage outside counsel relationships — selecting the right firms, scoping work narrowly, reviewing bills, and keeping quality high and costs controlled.

• Advise on legal matters related to people and people operations.

What You'll Bring

• 8+ years post-qualification experience, with significant time advising US tech/SaaS companies.

• In-house SaaS experience with deep US commercial law fluency alongside familiarity with UK/EU legal frameworks.

• Comfort operating as the sole senior legal hire initially, with the ability to build out an in-house legal team over time.

• Strong contract drafting and negotiation skills across the full commercial contract stack.

• Experience managing disputes and outside counsel relationships end to end.

• Based in the UK or Canada.

Nice to Have

• Background in B2B data or data-driven products.

• Experience supporting a company through a financing round or M&A process.

• Familiarity with email/marketing technology or adjacent regulated product areas.

• Familiarity with the sales engagement or lead intelligence software market.

• Experience at a fast-growing, remote-first company.