Commercial Counsel

Decagon•San Francisco, CA

12d•$235,000 - $300,000•Onsite

About The Position

Decagon is seeking an experienced Commercial or Senior Commercial Counsel to join their legal team. This role will be instrumental in establishing the legal foundation for a rapidly growing AI company. The counsel will collaborate with Sales, Security, Product, and Leadership teams, focusing on negotiating enterprise SaaS agreements, streamlining contract operations, accelerating revenue, protecting the business, and building scalable legal infrastructure. The position is part of a team that acts as trusted partners, balancing legal risk with business outcomes and providing tailored guidance. The role involves defining excellence in a legal team within a hypergrowth startup, establishing working norms and processes, and designing/enforcing policies for the contracting process. The individual will also have opportunities to grow with the company and take on new challenges as Decagon scales.

Requirements

Qualified attorney in their jurisdiction with 4 - 8+ years of legal experience, including time at a top-tier law firm and/or a relevant in-house role.
Deep experience drafting, negotiating, and closing on a high volume of commercial agreements, including SaaS, MSAs, SOWs, NDAs, DPAs, and partner/reseller deals.
Fluent in legal frameworks (like GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA), security concepts, AI governance, and intellectual property concerns that arise in SaaS transactions.
Understanding of how to balance legal risk with business outcomes, and ability to tailor guidance based on context and deal stage.
Thrive in cross-functional environments and be comfortable being the go-to legal resource for Sales, Finance, Product, and RevOps as a global contracting process is built out.
Ability to leave ego at the door and communicate clearly and effectively, translating legal complexity and abstract risk into actionable guidance for internal non-legal stakeholders and counterparties.
Flexibility, eagerness to learn and grow, and energized by fast growth, ambiguity, and the opportunity to build scalable legal systems that drive velocity.

Nice To Haves

In-house legal experience at a high-growth SaaS or technology company.
Process-building mindset, and experience working closely with RevOps or LegalOps on CLM tools and Salesforce integrations.
Experience leading customer-facing contract negotiations directly with enterprise clients, especially highly-regulated customers (financial services, healthcare, SLED & FED).
Experience negotiating AI terms with counterparties and ability to articulate common issues with brevity.
Experience building and maintaining legal playbooks, fallback clause libraries, and approval workflows.
Experience training commercial teams on contract review, negotiation strategy, or compliance topics, and eagerness to mentor junior colleagues.

Responsibilities

Reviewing and negotiating commercial agreements, working cross-functionally to balance legal risk with business outcomes, tailoring guidance based on context and deal stage.
Building relationships throughout the company and serving as a solutions-oriented partner to provide guidance to sales teams based on technology, market norms, and experience.
Defining excellence for a legal team in a hypergrowth startup by establishing working norms and processes to provide top-tier service.
Designing, updating, and enforcing policies and controls over Decagon’s contracting process.
Growing with the team as Decagon scales and being open to taking on new challenges outside of Commercial legal as appropriate.