Director, Patent Litigation Consulting (High-Tech IP)

Lumenci•San Francisco, CA

2d•$192,000 - $260,000•Remote

About The Position

Lumenci is seeking a Director of Patent Litigation Consulting to lead its high-tech intellectual property practice on the West Coast, specifically in the San Francisco Bay Area. This role involves people management and delivery leadership, where the successful candidate will manage a team of technical consultants and IP experts. Responsibilities include owning program and project delivery for patent litigation and licensing matters, and setting quality standards for technical work products such as claim charts, source code review, reverse engineering, patent portfolio analysis, and expert report support. The client matters cover diverse sectors including software, telecommunications, semiconductors, AI/ML, cloud infrastructure, consumer electronics, and medical devices. The ideal candidate will possess technical consulting leadership experience, expertise in at least one high-tech area, proven team management skills, and the executive presence to communicate complex findings to various stakeholders.

Requirements

Demonstrated people-management experience: direct reports, hiring, performance reviews, coaching, and career development.
Strong program management and project management skills across concurrent, interdependent workstreams, including planning, scoping, budgeting, resourcing, and dependency and risk management.
Experience leading distributed or cross-time-zone teams, and allocating people across a shared pool of resources.
Track record of growing and retaining technical talent, including promoting consultants into more senior roles.
Experience building process, standards, or internal products that improved how a team operated, not just what it delivered.
Comfort with management tooling and operating rhythms, including project tracking (Jira, Confluence, or equivalent), utilization and capacity reporting, and structured status reporting to leadership.
Deep working knowledge of at least one high-tech domain, with the analytical range to direct work in adjacent areas.
Familiarity with patent litigation and IP workflows, including infringement and invalidity analysis, claim charts, source code review, expert reports, inter partes review (IPR) and post-grant proceedings, patent licensing and monetization, standard essential patents (SEPs) and FRAND commitments, and trade secret matters.
Hands-on analytical foundation, including comfort with source code, data analysis, and AI-assisted analytical tooling, sufficient to direct and quality-control technical work.
Strong client management and stakeholder engagement skills across legal, technical, and executive audiences.
Ability to simplify highly technical concepts for non-technical audiences, including executives, counsel, judges, and juries.
Excellent technical writing and verbal communication skills for reports, whitepapers, expert materials, and legal documentation.
Highly analytical approach to problem-solving across a wide range of technologies and business situations.
Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, or a related technical field.
10+ years of combined experience across technical consulting, IP strategy, patent litigation support, licensing, or patent law, including senior client-facing delivery leadership.
5+ years of direct people-management experience leading technical or professional-services teams, with responsibility for hiring, performance, and development.
Demonstrated ownership of program or portfolio delivery, including multiple concurrent projects, budget accountability, and resourcing decisions.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree (MS, PhD, MBA) or JD.
Prior experience with patent litigation, licensing programs, expert witness support, or large-scale data and source code review.
Registration with the USPTO, an active bar license, PMP, or Certified ScrumMaster.

Responsibilities

Lead, manage, and develop a team of technical consultants and IP experts, including direct reports and matrixed contributors across US and India delivery teams.
Own hiring for the practice: partner with People Operations on workforce planning, define role profiles, interview and select candidates, and onboard new consultants.
Run the performance cycle for your team, including goal setting, regular one-on-ones, feedback, formal reviews, calibration, and compensation recommendations.
Build individual development plans and career paths, mentoring consultants toward senior client-facing, expert-witness-adjacent, and practice-leadership roles.
Coordinate training and enablement so consultants can move across matter types, technologies, and analytical methods.
Foster a culture of innovation, technical excellence, and psychological safety, with high engagement and retention on your team.
Address people and delivery issues early, partnering with People Operations on performance management when needed.
Own delivery across a portfolio of client matters, including scoping, planning, budgeting, milestones, and on-time, on-budget completion.
Manage staffing, resource allocation, and utilization across engagements, matching technical fit to matter requirements and balancing workload against deadlines.
Identify and manage risks and dependencies across cross-functional, technical, financial, and legal workstreams, escalating early with options rather than surprises.
Scope and price complex engagements, including large-scale data and source code review efforts, and manage change orders as matters evolve.
Serve as the senior point of accountability on high-value, high-visibility matters, including fast-burn analyses with compressed litigation timelines.
Track budget-to-actuals, margin, and utilization for the practice, and report on them to executive leadership.
Establish and enforce the practice's quality bar: review protocols, documentation standards, peer review, defensibility checks, and consistent work product across consultants.
Build and codify repeatable methodologies, playbooks, templates, and internal training so outcomes do not depend on individual heroics.
Drive continuous improvement in how the team works, including intake, workflow, time and capacity tracking, tooling, and knowledge management.
Champion adoption of Lumenci's AI-enabled tooling and help shape internal tools and workflows based on what the delivery team actually needs.
Partner with adjacent functions, including product, legal, finance, and People Operations, on cross-department initiatives and process standardization.
Serve as a senior client relationship owner: run status and strategy conversations, manage expectations, and resolve escalations across multi-stakeholder engagements.
Present technical and analytical findings in high-stakes settings to non-technical audiences, including executives, in-house counsel, litigators, and financial decision-makers.
Advise clients and counsel on approach, feasibility, methodology, and trade-offs on complex technical matters.
Support account growth organically through delivery quality by identifying follow-on work and expanded scope within existing relationships, and partnering with business development on new opportunities.
Represent Lumenci at industry events, panels, and CLE programs as a practice expert.
Direct and quality-control technical work product, including claim charts, source code review, reverse engineering, technical due diligence, patent portfolio analysis, damages-supporting analysis, and expert report support.
Develop technical narratives that connect rigorous analysis to litigation strategy, and shape how findings are presented in court, arbitration, and settlement contexts.
Partner with testifying expert witnesses: brief them, direct the analysis underlying their reports, and prepare supporting technical exhibits.
Bring deep expertise in at least one high-tech domain and the judgment to lead teams working in others.
Stay current on technology and IP trends in your area of depth and translate them into practical guidance for the team and clients.