Director, Commercial Legal (Cloud & SaaS)

F5•San Jose, CA

5d•$278,400 - $417,600

About The Position

F5 is scaling its global application delivery and security SaaS platform and is seeking a strategic, business-minded Director, Commercial Legal to join its elite North American commercial legal team. This role offers the opportunity to solve high-impact cloud contracting challenges, accelerate enterprise deal velocity, and directly help shape the product roadmap of a global leader. The position will leverage transactional expertise to design scalable legal frameworks, establish global precedent for emerging SaaS offerings, drive proactive, solution-oriented business enablement and revenue momentum, and align enterprise legal strategy directly with product innovation.

Requirements

Juris Doctor (J.D.) from an accredited law school and active bar membership in good standing in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
10+ years of relevant legal experience, including significant in-house experience negotiating enterprise SaaS, cloud platform, and data processing agreements within peer technology companies, cloud-native competitors, or established enterprise vendors.
Strong practical understanding of privacy, cybersecurity, AI governance, and emerging technology and AI regulations, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS 4.0, FedRAMP, HIPAA, GDPR and U.S. state privacy law, the EU AI Act and DORA.
Deep understanding of the SaaS business model, subscription economics, and market-standard contractual expectations, including DPAs, SLA structures, and liability standards common among major SaaS providers.
A proven track record as a business enabler who prioritizes commercial velocity. Must demonstrate the ability to evaluate risk through a commercial lens offering creative, practical solutions to close deals efficiently.
Ability to credibly discuss concepts like data residency, tenancy, encryption, and telemetry with both technical and non-technical stakeholders and translate them into contractual language.
Proven ability to build trusted relationships across executive leadership, sales, product management, and engineering teams, as well as mentor junior legal team members, and direct experience managing or leading contract managers or other legal professionals.
Comfort with ambiguity in fast-paced, evolving multi-cloud landscape, with the initiative to build playbooks from the ground up where standard precedents do not yet exist.

Responsibilities

Drive and close high-value enterprise SaaS transactions with regulated Fortune 500 customers in financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, a significant share of them negotiated on the customer's own paper. Focus heavily on transactional efficiency, reducing sales friction, and closing deals quickly without compromising material risk.
Partner closely with Product Management, Information Security and Product Counsel teams during early-stage product design. Translate complex cloud infrastructure concepts such as multi-tenancy, data sovereignty, encryption, and telemetry into clear, defensible commercial terms and customer-facing commitments.
Collaborate closely with legal and business leaders to identify, escalate, and resolve systemic commercial negotiation blockers, helping drive deal velocity and scale enterprise data controls globally.
Lead a team of two commercial contract managers serving as global subject matter experts for F5 SaaS transactions. Your team will take first-pass review of incoming customer paper against F5's standard positions and approved fallbacks, guide commercial attorneys across regions, and triage escalations, developing scalable resources and playbooks to standardize our approach to complex cloud negotiations.
In collaboration with our Privacy and Cybersecurity teams, structure robust data processing agreements, security exhibits, and compliance frameworks that address cross-border data transfers, regulatory changes, and enterprise customer requirements.
Continuously evaluate and optimize negotiation playbooks and self-service contracting workflows to accelerate sales cycles and unlock revenue while maintaining a pragmatic, commercial approach to risk.