Product Counsel

Beacon Software•San Francisco, CA

19h

About The Position

Beacon is seeking a commercially minded Product Counsel to join its legal team as a dedicated product and IP specialist. This is a high-impact role at the intersection of law, technology, and product strategy. The Product Counsel will be the primary legal partner to Beacon and its portfolio’s product and engineering functions, advising on new product features and development across various industries, protecting Beacon’s intellectual property, and managing product-related legal matters. Reporting to Beacon’s VP, Legal, the role involves close collaboration with product managers, engineers, and commercial teams to enable innovation while managing legal risk. The position requires broad regulatory fluency across multiple industries and ownership of Beacon’s IP portfolio strategy, open source compliance program, and product-related commercial agreements. There is an opportunity to grow this role to encompass broader commercial contracting responsibilities. This role is ideal for a lawyer who wants to be embedded in the work, thrives in a fast-paced, high-autonomy environment, and is excited by the prospect of building and shaping their remit over time.

Requirements

J.D. from an accredited law school and member in good standing of at least one bar (California or New York preferred).
5–7 years of product, technology, and IP law experience at a top-tier law firm, or 4–5 years of in-house product and IP counsel experience at a technology company.
Broad product law experience spanning IP strategy and portfolio management, software and SaaS licensing, open source compliance, and product-facing commercial agreements.
Demonstrated ability to work directly with product and engineering teams — both at a corporate level and embedded within individual business units or portfolio companies — as a trusted legal partner.
Comfortable operating in agile product environments and translating legal requirements into actionable, developer-friendly guidance.
Broad regulatory experience across multiple industries, with the ability to quickly come up to speed on sector-specific legal frameworks and advise product teams on compliance obligations in verticals outside of mainstream consumer technology.
Strong background in patent strategy and prosecution management, trademark portfolio oversight, and IP ownership and licensing structures.
Experience with commercial contracting — including drafting and negotiating MSAs, vendor agreements, and customer-facing terms — is a strong plus, and may expand the scope of this role over time.
Proficiency with AI tools for legal work, and a genuine interest in building efficient, scalable legal workflows for a high-growth, multi-product environment.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical and legal concepts in clear, business-friendly language.

Nice To Haves

Experience advising on AI/ML products and familiarity with the evolving legal landscape around training data rights, and AI regulation is a strong plus.
Experience conducting or advising on IP and technology due diligence in M&A transactions, including freedom-to-operate analysis, open source risk assessment, and IP integration planning.
Experience with vertical market software, SaaS, or multi-product technology platforms is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

Serve as the embedded legal partner to Beacon’s product and engineering teams, and as a hands-on advisor to the product and engineering teams across Beacon’s portfolio companies.
Advise on new product features, roadmap decisions, and go-to-market launches from ideation through release, identifying legal risks early and providing practical, enabling guidance.
Build trusted relationships with product managers, engineers, and designers across the platform so that legal input is integrated into the product development process.
Develop scalable legal support models that allow portfolio company product teams to access consistent, high-quality legal guidance.
Own and manage Beacon’s intellectual property portfolio across the platform and portfolio companies.
Develop and execute a proactive IP strategy including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.
Oversee patent prosecution and filing programs, manage trademark registrations globally, and advise on IP ownership, assignment, and licensing matters.
Build IP frameworks that protect Beacon’s competitive advantages and the proprietary technology of acquired companies.
Draft, review, and negotiate a broad range of product-facing commercial agreements, including SaaS and software licensing agreements, API terms and developer agreements, marketplace and platform agreements, technology partnership arrangements, and product integration agreements.
Develop and maintain standard-form product agreements, terms of service, and acceptable use policies for Beacon and its portfolio companies.
Build and manage Beacon’s open source compliance program.
Review and advise on the use of open source software across product development, assess license compatibility and obligations, and establish policies and processes that enable responsible open source use at scale across the portfolio.
Lead and conduct product and IP due diligence on acquisition targets — assessing IP ownership, freedom to operate, patent exposure, open source risks, software licensing obligations, and technology dependency risks.
Develop standardized IP diligence checklists and frameworks.
Post-close, advise on IP integration, assignment, and consolidation across the portfolio.
Advise on the legal and IP dimensions of Beacon’s and its portfolio companies’ use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in products.
Provide guidance on AI-generated content ownership, training data rights, model licensing, and emerging regulatory frameworks.
Help product teams build AI-powered features responsibly, with appropriate legal guardrails.
Bring broad regulatory fluency to advise on product-related legal requirements across the diverse range of industries represented in Beacon’s portfolio.
Advise on sector-specific compliance obligations, platform liability considerations, accessibility requirements, and consumer protection laws as they apply to product features and releases.
Partner with the privacy counsel function on product-layer data collection, consent, and data minimization requirements.
Advise on brand protection strategy, trademark enforcement, and content-related legal matters including copyright clearance, user-generated content policies, and DMCA compliance.
Manage third-party IP claims and develop enforcement and response procedures for IP disputes.
Build a library of reusable product legal templates, standard-form agreements, and internal playbooks that increase speed and consistency as Beacon scales its product and portfolio operations.
Leverage AI tools to streamline contract review, legal research, and document drafting.