Head of Legal Operations

Braze•New York City, NY

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

At Braze, we have found our people. We’re a genuinely approachable, exceptionally kind, and intensely passionate crew. We seek to ignite that passion by setting high standards, championing teamwork, and creating work-life harmony as we collectively navigate rapid growth on a global scale while striving for greater equity and opportunity – inside and outside our organization. To flourish here, you must be prepared to set a high bar for yourself and those around you. There is always a way to contribute: Acting with autonomy, having accountability and being open to new perspectives are essential to our continued success. Our deep curiosity to learn and our eagerness to share diverse passions with others gives us balance and injects a one-of-a-kind vibrancy into our culture. If you are driven to solve exhilarating challenges and have a bias toward action in the face of change, you will be empowered to make a real impact here, with a sharp and passionate team at your back. If Braze sounds like a place where you can thrive, we can’t wait to meet you. As Head of Legal Operations, you will lead Legal Operations at Braze. You will report to the SVP, Legal, Privacy & Ops and work as a strategic partner to the General Counsel and legal leadership. You will own the strategy, roadmap, technology architecture and data behind how our global legal department works: how work comes in, where our time and money go, what systems we run, and how we apply AI and automation to legal work. This is a builder's role. Our legal team runs on an established stack (Salesforce, Ironclad, Jira and JSM, OneTrust), and there is a funded appetite to go further: structured contract and spend data, deeper automation, and AI in production. Some of this foundation is solid and some needs rebuilding. You will be responsible for what we build, buy, negotiate and retire, and you will be accountable for the results. You will be as comfortable presenting spend and resourcing trends to the GC as you are specifying an integration with a systems admin. You will also build and lead a small team, starting with a Legal Operations Analyst you will recruit, manage and develop. The role works with legal and business teams across our offices globally. This is a great opportunity to join a leading technology company that is growing quickly and scaling wisely. We're looking for an enthusiastic individual, team-player and quick thinker who will care deeply about the employee experience and is able to enjoy and contribute to fostering a positive work culture.

Requirements

Substantial legal operations leadership experience at a scaling technology company, including ownership of a legal operations function or of a major program within one.
Demonstrated people leadership: hiring, managing and developing team members, and building an operating model that delegates effectively.
Deep, hands-on technical expertise across legal and go-to-market systems — ideally Salesforce, Jira, Ironclad and OneTrust, or close equivalents — including workflow design, automation and integration architecture. You should be able to specify and challenge technical work, not only commission it.
Track record of legal technology vendor selection and commercial negotiation, with accountability for budget, renewals and vendor performance.
Proven ability to define a roadmap and deliver change across a global, cross-functional organization, including system migrations and implementations.
Experience defining, instrumenting and reporting operational metrics and service commitments for a legal or comparable function.
Strong analytical skills, with hands-on experience building dashboards and reporting in BI tools (e.g., Tableau, Looker or Salesforce reporting).
Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with credibility at General Counsel level and with engineering and IT counterparts alike.
Strong judgment on data integrity, confidentiality and the handling of sensitive information.
A working understanding of commercial contracting is essential.

Nice To Haves

Experience in the SaaS industry, including familiarity with SaaS commercial contracts.
Understanding of data protection and privacy concepts.
Experience deploying AI in a legal function in production, beyond pilots, including governance and adoption.
Experience owning a legal service desk or ticketing-based intake function at scale.
Experience operating across multiple jurisdictions and languages, including multi-language legal document workflows.
Experience growing a legal operations team from one person to several.

Responsibilities

Own the Legal Operations strategy, multi-year roadmap and OKRs. Set priorities across the department's competing operational demands, and report progress and impact to legal and executive leadership.
Build the department's view of where its time and money go, by functional area, matter type and business partner. Turn spend, workload and contract data into trends and recommendations for the legal leadership, and use them to inform prioritization, headcount planning and investment decisions.
Recruit and manage a Legal Operations Analyst. Set the operating model so that execution sits at the right level and senior capacity stays focused on design, negotiation and change.
Own the architecture of the legal technology stack — including Salesforce, Jira and Jira Service Management, Ironclad and OneTrust, alongside e-signature, content management, sales enablement and procurement platforms. Responsible for building, buying, integrating and retiring decisions, and designing for scale.
Own the integration layer between contract management, CRM, screening, e-signature and finance systems end to end — from technical requirements through delivery, testing and production support. Drive automation of manual legal workflows as a standing objective.
Turn the contract population into structured, queryable data, and build the reporting layer that Legal leadership and the business rely on for commitments, obligations and risk. Define with the relevant legal functions the metrics the legal department manages itself by and enable appropriate reporting on such metrics.
Own legal technology vendor selection, evaluation, commercial negotiation, renewals, spend and performance management. Hold Legal vendors to their commitments and build the business case for new investment.
Define in collaboration with Legal leadership and execute the department's AI roadmap — contract review and drafting support, contract data extraction, knowledge management, intake deflection, and attorney use of general-purpose AI tools and self-built workflows — including governance, evaluation of output quality, and the change management needed for adoption to stick.
Own legal intake as a product: how work reaches the department, how it is triaged and routed, what the service commitments are, and how performance against them is measured and reported. Design, document and implement new processes between Legal and its business partners, with the enablement and training.
Run the operational backbone of the department's compliance obligations, including third-party due diligence, sanctions and export control screening, data retention and records management, in partnership with the legal and business owners of each program.
Act as Legal's operational counterpart to IT, Business Systems, Finance, Procurement and other departments. Secure the engineering and admin capacity Legal needs, and influence system decisions made outside the department that affect it.

Benefits

Competitive compensation that may include equity
Retirement and Employee Stock Purchase Plans
Flexible paid time off
Comprehensive benefit plans covering medical, dental, vision, life, and disability
Family services that include fertility benefits and equal paid parental leave
Professional development supported by formal career pathing, learning platforms, and a yearly learning stipend
A curated in-office employee experience, designed to foster community, team connections, and innovation
Opportunities to give back to your community, including an annual company-wide Volunteer Week and donation matching
Employee Resource Groups that provide supportive communities within Braze
Collaborative, transparent, and fun culture recognized as a Great Place to Work®