Head of Legal

Heron Power•Scotts Valley, CA

About The Position

Heron Power is a startup building cutting-edge power electronics for the 21st-century grid. We aim to debottleneck the growth of electricity generation and consumption with scalable, innovative, and cost-effective hardware solutions, accelerating the electrification of everything. Our first goal is to build better converters (inverters & rectifiers) to connect large-scale renewables, storage, and loads to the grid. Heron’s leadership team is made up of seasoned veterans who have designed and shipped gigawatts of power conversion products. We believe no one person knows everything. We learn together, build together, and solve hard problems from first principles. You’ll work in a fast-moving, deeply technical environment where ownership and impact are real. We are seeking a Head of Legal to serve as Heron Power's first in-house trusted legal partner to the entire company. As the company scales from R&D toward mass production and customer deployments, you will lead execution of commercial contracts with customers, suppliers, and partners. You’ll also own the critical legal workstreams for a hardware startup, including protecting our IP portfolio, negotiating leases, and ensuring proper compliance with applicable regulation. You are a leader who is technically exceptional while simultaneously solutions oriented, and knows how to balance commercial execution vs. critical risk protection. This is a high impact role that will own every legal workstream end-to-end, and have a direct seat at the table on key business decisions. You’ll manage relationships with outside counsel and be an individual contributor short-term, with the capacity to recruit a dynamic legal function as Heron scales.

Requirements

JD from an accredited law school
8+ years of legal experience, with a meaningful mix of law firm and in-house roles; high-growth technology company or energy project development experience strongly preferred
Demonstrated experience negotiating complex commercial agreements involving hardware, manufacturing, or physical goods, including supply, procurement, or deployment contexts
Working knowledge of IP strategy and patent/trademark portfolio management; you don't need to be a patent attorney, but you know how to work with one
Familiarity with equity, securities, and corporate governance matters at a venture-backed company
Comfort with the ambiguity and juggling multiple projects; you're as comfortable rolling up your sleeves on an NDA as you are advising the CEO on a strategic deal
Exceptional communication skills and judgement, with the ability to distill complex legal concepts into practical advice for non-legal stakeholders
Genuine enthusiasm for AI-powered legal tools and a bias toward building leverage through systems, not headcount

Nice To Haves

Background in power electronics, energy, climate tech, or capital-intensive manufacturing
Familiarity with 45X or similar federal tax credits

Responsibilities

Draft, negotiate, and manage the full spectrum of commercial agreements — customer supply agreements, long-term service agreements (LTSAs), supplier purchase agreements, NDAs, consulting and service agreements
Develop Heron's standard contract playbook, including templates, systems, and processes that allow the business to move quickly
Own and execute Heron's IP strategy in partnership with engineering leadership, coordinating with outside counsel on patent & trademark filings
Collaborate with HR on employment law compliance across the full employee lifecycle — offers, immigration, equity, performance, and separations
Manage corporate legal matters including entity formation, governance, insurance, and fundraising support
Provide informed advice to cross-functional partners across environmental permitting, data privacy and cybersecurity, tax credit eligibility
Ensure compliance with export controls, trade regulations, and other requirements relevant to global hardware deployment
Recruit, motivate, and manage future legal team members