Senior Legal Counsel

Generalist • Somerville, MA

6d

About The Position

Generalist is building embodied foundation models, beginning with dexterity, to enable robots to intelligently interact with the physical world. The company combines large-scale AI and robotics, with a team whose experience includes frontier research labs, AI products, autonomous driving, and advanced robotics.

As Generalist’s first in-house legal hire, the Senior Legal Counsel will take broad ownership across commercial, corporate, privacy, and technology matters and help build the legal function as the company scales. The role works closely with company leadership and Applied AI & Partnerships and manages external counsel where specialized support is needed.

This is a hands-on role for an experienced, highly independent lawyer with strong foundations in commercial and corporate law and an interest in emerging technology. The counsel will address issues that may have limited precedent, particularly those involving AI, machine learning, data, privacy, intellectual property, and new technology business models. Generalist may level an exceptional candidate with the breadth and experience to serve as its senior-most legal leader accordingly.

Requirements

• JD and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar.
• 6–10+ years of relevant legal experience, including meaningful experience at a technology company, technology-focused law firm, or both.
• Strong experience drafting and negotiating commercial technology agreements.
• Ability to independently identify legal issues, assess risk, develop recommendations, and drive matters to resolution without significant day-to-day supervision.
• Strong grounding in corporate and commercial law and ability to work across a broad range of legal issues rather than specializing narrowly in one area.
• Ability to understand complex technical concepts, work effectively with engineering and research teams, and advise on technology, data, intellectual property, privacy, or related legal issues.
• Excellent commercial judgment and ability to give clear, practical advice.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including ability to explain complex legal concepts clearly to non-lawyers.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment where applicable law, market norms, and contractual precedent may still be developing.

Nice To Haves

• In-house experience at an AI, machine learning, robotics, software, or other frontier technology company, especially a growth-stage startup.
• Significant experience leading or supporting complex commercial deals, strategic transactions, financings, acquisitions, investments, and other high-value or high-impact legal transactions from structuring through execution.
• Experience negotiating agreements involving AI models, training data, data licensing, model outputs, fine-tuning, intellectual property, or other emerging technology issues.
• Familiarity with current commercial and legal practices in generative AI and LLM-related transactions.

Responsibilities

• Draft, review, and negotiate commercial agreements, including strategic partnerships, customer and vendor contracts, pilots, statements of work, NDAs, and other technology transactions.
• Support complex negotiations with Partnerships and company leadership.
• Support financings, fundraising, corporate governance, board and stockholder matters, diligence, and other corporate workstreams, coordinating with external counsel as needed.
• Advise on legal issues related to the company’s technology, including training data, data-use rights, models and fine-tunes, intellectual property, confidentiality and privacy, deployment, and emerging AI and robotics issues.
• Serve as a practical legal advisor across the company, translating legal risk into clear recommendations that help teams move quickly and make sound decisions.
• Build scalable templates, playbooks, policies, and processes, and manage outside counsel where specialized support is needed.
• Stay current on developments in AI, LLMs, robotics, privacy, intellectual property, regulation, market practices, and contractual precedent, and take on new legal issues as they arise.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree