General Counsel

FAR.AI•,

29d•$250,000 - $350,000•Hybrid

About The Position

FAR.AI is a non-profit AI research institute dedicated to ensuring advanced AI is safe and beneficial for everyone. We work at the intersection of machine learning, safety research, and policy, supporting a global community of researchers and practitioners. At FAR.AI, we believe in thoughtful, inclusive, and rigorous work that empowers our team and partners to do their best work. Since our founding in July 2022, we've grown quickly to 40+ staff, producing 30+ influential academic papers, and established the leading AI Safety events for research and international cooperation. Our work is recognized globally, with publications at premier venues and features in the Financial Times, Nature News, Forbes, and MIT Technology Review. We drive practical change through red-teaming with frontier model developers and government institutions. Most recently, we discovered major issues with Anthropic’s latest model the same day it was released, and worked with OpenAI to safeguard their latest model. Additionally, we help steer and grow the AI safety field through developing research roadmaps with renowned researchers such as Yoshua Bengio. We also operate FAR.Labs, an AI safety-focused co-working space in Berkeley, housing 40 members, as well as support the community through targeted grants to technical researchers.

Requirements

Strong judgment and comfort making calls with imperfect information. You can translate legal complexity into clear recommendations for non-lawyers.
Demonstrated experience across the full scope of a legal function: contracting, governance, employment, data privacy, and compliance. You don't need to be a specialist in all of them, but you do need experience in different areas.
Track record of building, not just maintaining. You have stood up legal programs, or at least key parts, from scratch and made them stick.
Experience at a technology or AI organization.
Comfort using AI legal tools such as Claude for Legal or equivalent.

Nice To Haves

Experience in fast-paced environments. You've worked in startups, nimble nonprofits, or high-growth teams before and can adapt to change quickly.
Experience as in-house counsel.
Nonprofit experience, including 501(c)(3) governance and grantmaking compliance.
Experience with international entities, especially related-party flows, transfer pricing, EoR arrangements, and standing up subsidiaries.
An active US bar membership in good standing.
Experience contributing to an impact-driven organization or passionate about AI safety.

Responsibilities

Commercial contracting. Partner with leaders across the organization to review, advise, and draft contracts for grants, consulting agreements, vendor contracts, compute commitments, research partnerships, and any other needs. Advise on risk and commercial terms across the organization.
Contractual compliance. Oversee FAR.AI's compliance obligations across its contract portfolio (government, commercial, and grant agreements), in coordination with the operations team.
Internal policies. Support and build FAR.AI's policies across employment, data privacy, conflicts of interest, and related areas. Keep policies concise, current, practical, and accessible.
Governance and related-party matters. Support board governance, related-party relationships, and compliance for the 501(c)(3), LLC, Singapore CLG, and future entities.
Employment. Partner with the People team on offers, contractor agreements, visa issues, international hiring, performance matters, and policy updates. Keep FAR.AI compliant with employment law across jurisdictions.
Data privacy and security. Partner with and advise Operations to improve and maintain our data protection program covering employee data, research data, and partner data. Support or own incident response readiness, partner diligence, and compliance (e.g., GDPR).
Intellectual property. Steward IP ownership, licensing, and protection across entities and partnerships, including research IP, trademarks, and licenses.
Statutory reporting and compliance. Support Operations on filings across entities: federal and state, Singapore, charity filings, registrations, and other obligations.
Risk assessment. Contribute to the organization’s risk register. Recommend mitigations proportionate to exposure. Own the solutioning of complex legal challenges e.g., cross-border, multi-jurisdictional exposure, export controls, etc. Engage external counsel when the situation warrants it.