Contracts & Legal Operations Specialist

CHAOS Industries•El Segundo, CA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

CHAOS Industries is seeking a Contracts & Legal Operations Specialist to join its Legal team. This role is a foundational hire, responsible for both hands-on contract review, negotiation, and drafting support, as well as designing and managing the systems and processes that enable the Legal department to scale with the company's growth. The specialist will play a key role in shaping how contracts move through the organization, from intake to execution, within a company actively building its legal infrastructure. The position offers a wide range of responsibilities, including reviewing commercial agreements, refining intake workflows, and managing outside counsel reporting.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree and/or paralegal certificate.
4+ years of experience in contracts management, legal operations, or a similar operational/legal support role in a technology, aerospace/defense, or similarly regulated environment.
Demonstrated experience reviewing, drafting, and negotiating vendor contracts and NDAs independently, with good judgment on when to escalate to counsel.
Hands-on experience building or administering workflows in a contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform.
Systems experience beyond CLM — ticketing/intake systems, document management platforms, or productivity suites.
Strong analytical skills, with the ability to manage projects and drive cross-functional initiatives.
Strong organizational skills, attention to detail, and written/verbal communication — comfortable building structure where none exists and interfacing directly with stakeholders and counterparties.
Comfort with ambiguity and ownership; high discretion handling confidential and commercially sensitive information.

Nice To Haves

e-signature and e-billing tooling experience preferred.
Experience with export compliance, ITAR, or government contracts environments.
Experience at a high-growth or technology company preferred.

Responsibilities

Review vendor/commercial contracts and NDAs, drafting and negotiating directly with counterparties and escalating novel or high-risk issues to counsel.
Draft and negotiate commercial agreements, applying standard playbook positions and knowing when a deviation needs legal sign-off.
Triage inbound NDA and contract requests, distinguishing standard-template turnarounds from redline/negotiation-track requests.
Manage the Docusign environment: envelope creation, template management, user permissions, and signature tracking.
Coordinate and chase signatures across the organization; track all documents pending execution and follow up proactively with signatories.
Flag structural or drafting issues in incoming paper (e.g., mismatched headers and substance, one-sided terms dressed as mutual) before they reach counsel review.
Maintain and continuously improve our contract template library and standard playbook positions.
Build and maintain automated workflows in CLM, covering intake, routing, approvals, and status tracking for NDAs and commercial contracts.
Support the Legal intake system: triage requests, route to the right owner, help refine request types and instructions as volume grows.
Maintain the Legal team's document repository and naming/version-control conventions.
Track and report on legal operations metrics: request volume, turnaround times, and outside counsel spend.
Support outside counsel and vendor management: tracking billing against budget in coordination with finance, assisting with invoice review.
Assist with building out onboarding materials, playbooks, and process documentation for the Legal function as it scales.
Identify opportunities to use AI-native tools to speed up contract review, intake triage, and reporting.