Senior Legal Counsel, Product

Vercel • San Francisco, CA

9d • Hybrid

About The Position

Vercel is seeking an experienced, technical, and business-minded Senior Counsel to support its product innovation and shipping velocity. This role will partner closely with Engineering, Product and Design (EPD), Security, and other cross-functional teams to provide comprehensive legal support throughout the product development lifecycle. The position involves building out processes and programs as a foundational member of the Legal team. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on product counseling, with potential support for commercial transactions. The role reports to the VP of Legal and is based in San Francisco, requiring a 3-day per week in-office presence.

Requirements

• Admitted to the California Bar or eligible for Registered In-House Counsel exception and in good standing.
• 8+ years of legal experience, including 4+ years of product legal experience at a software company.
• Significant experience counseling product and engineering teams through the product development lifecycle from conception to launch and advising on the legal and regulatory aspects of product development in the software industry.
• Strong understanding of cloud services and general SaaS, PaaS, IaaS business practices and relevant global regulatory requirements.
• Able to quickly form and convincingly communicate a point of view, under time pressure and with imperfect information.
• Loves being a generalist and avoids silos. Will take on additional responsibilities and explore subjects outside of your core expertise where no job is too big or too small.
• Strong judgment and risk-assessment and mitigation skills, adapting legal requirements in creative and pragmatic ways.
• Can independently manage and negotiate technology agreements with customers, technology partners, and technology vendors.
• Prefers fast-paced, highly variable environments, with a proven track record of building new or improving existing processes at other hyper-growth companies.
• Enjoys mentoring and advising Legal teammates regardless of formal reporting lines.

Nice To Haves

• Computer science degree or technical background in software engineering for the web.
• Experience with commercial transactions, intellectual property, open source, platform safety
• Used Vercel’s products and services.

Responsibilities

• Partner closely with EPD teams to enable cutting-edge product initiatives, balancing innovation and speed with responsible risk management and customer trust.
• Identify and drive resolution of issues related to privacy, data security, AI, platform safety, marketing, competition, intellectual property, and other legal and regulatory areas.
• Help translate evolving laws and market expectations into practical, actionable guidance.
• Work with cross-functional teams to build scalable processes and draft/maintain templates that allow Vercel to ship faster and smarter over time.
• Engage on special projects and provide legal support to sales, partnerships, procurement, M&A, and other teams as needed, particularly in transactions where nuanced product knowledge is critical.

Benefits

• Total compensation package may include benefits, equity-based compensation, and eligibility for a company bonus or variable pay program depending on the role.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees