In-House Counsel

Zanskar • Salt Lake City, UT

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

Zanskar is seeking an In-House Counsel to be a trusted legal partner to the Co-founders and leadership team. This role will translate legal and regulatory risk into practical decisions, manage day-to-day legal work across various areas including corporate governance, financing, project development, commercial contracting, public policy, employment, intellectual property, compliance, and real property. The position will help make projects financeable, strengthen risk management, and lay the groundwork for a growing legal function. As Zanskar scales its geothermal development pipeline, this role will consolidate legal work previously managed by outside counsel into a focused, in-house function.

Requirements

• Attorney in good standing and eligible for admission or registration in Utah.
• Meaningful experience in an in-house role or as outside counsel with direct accountability to business clients at a high-growth company, energy or infrastructure business, independent power producer, project developer, or similarly complex organization.
• Ability to distinguish real risk from noise and provide clear, practical advice.
• Comfortable giving advice, including when the answer is 'no', and knowing when to escalate.
• Thoughtful use of legal technology, data, and automation to improve speed, consistency, and insight without compromising confidentiality, privilege, or professional judgment.
• Comfortable starting from scratch or building on existing processes and moving between higher-level advice and more detailed execution.
• Ability to create fit-for-stage structures and controls.
• Energized by Zanskar’s mission and by a high-volume, first-of-kind environment.
• Ability to bring sound judgment, curiosity, and resilience to problems that may not have an established playbook.
• Ability to translate legal risk into clear options and help teams reach durable decisions.
• Knowledge of when to move quickly, when to escalate, and when the company needs an unambiguous no.

Nice To Haves

• Exposure to project finance, bankability, or energy development is a strong plus.
• Strong generalists ready to grow into the space.

Responsibilities

• Be a responsive, practical legal resource to the Co-founders and leadership team on day-to-day decisions, flagging enterprise-level risk and looping in outside counsel or the leadership team on the highest-stakes calls.
• Help structure and negotiate project development, construction, financing, tax, offtake, interconnection, and other critical agreements so projects can meet lender and investor diligence standards.
• Support legal work across mineral and surface rights, site control, land use, permitting, environmental review (including NEPA and CEQA where applicable), and federal, state, and local regulatory matters.
• Help design a forward-thinking legal department, aggressively utilizing AI and automation to handle high-volume workflows, keeping the internal team lean and high-leverage.
• Help manage outside-counsel strategy, selection, scope, budgets, performance, and knowledge transfer. Match work to the right provider, hold firms accountable for commercial advice and cost, and bring repeatable work in-house when it creates leverage.

Benefits

• Direct access to the Co-founders and leadership team and real influence over how we shape and grow the legal function.
• A clear growth path: as the company and its legal needs scale, we expect this role and its scope to growth with it.
• Equity upside in a company at an early stage of what we believe is a very large market.
• The opportunity to shape the legal function—its processes, systems, external partnerships, and team—from the ground up.
• Work that matters! Geothermal is one of the most compelling solutions to firm clean power and Zanskar is at the frontier of it.
• A team that takes the mission seriously without taking itself too seriously.
• $170,000–$250,000 base salary + equity.
• Relocation support is available for the right candidate.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed