Vice President, Deputy General Counsel – Commercial

Snowflake•Menlo Park, CA

4d•Onsite

About The Position

At Snowflake, we are powering the era of the agentic enterprise. To usher in this new era, we seek AI-native thinkers across every function who are energized by the opportunity to reinvent how they work. You don’t just use tools; you possess an innate curiosity, treating AI as a high-trust collaborator that is core to how you solve problems and accelerate your impact. We look for low-ego individuals who thrive in dynamic and fast-moving environments and move with an experimental mindset — who rapidly test emerging capabilities to discover simpler, more powerful ways to deliver results. At Snowflake, your role isn't just to execute a function, but to help redefine the future of how work gets done. Snowflake is looking for an experienced legal professional with a strong understanding of SaaS business models to lead our world-class commercial legal team. Reporting to the General Counsel, this role requires a collaborative and pragmatic team player who can proactively lead the global commercial legal team, navigate escalations, and drive and manage multiple complex customer negotiations and commercial projects through to completion. Superb management, transactional, analytical, written and verbal communication skills are critical, particularly in conveying difficult feedback, issues and topics with various cross-functional leaders and executives. We are looking for someone with demonstrated leadership skills who can hit the ground running and make an immediate impact. You will be a core member of the Legal leadership team, partnering closely with peer leaders, including Legal Operations, as well as executives across Product, Engineering, and Finance. This role requires a balance of strategic judgment and operational excellence, along with the ability to lead through complexity and utilize technology to drive execution at global scale. This role is based in our Menlo Park (California) office. This is not a remote position.

Requirements

At least 15 years of relevant commercial legal experience directly supporting a sales organization, and at least 8 years of strong in-house management experience, preferably with a successful, high-growth enterprise SaaS company
Law degree from an accredited U.S. law school and license to practice law in the U.S.
Outstanding analytical, drafting, negotiation, collaboration, written and verbal communication skills
Demonstrates strong judgment and critical thinking, and ability to deliver balanced, pragmatic risk assessments
Proven ability to build trust and credibility across both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Strong background with SaaS-centric issues (e.g., revenue recognition, data privacy, security, tax, intellectual property, and artificial intelligence), professional services and various go-to-market programs
Maintains a calm, composed demeanor under pressure, with experience handling escalations at all levels
Demonstrated data driven, technology-based, AI-forward approach to managing and scaling legal processes and initiatives, tracking metrics and KPIs, measuring performance, resource planning and strategic decision making.
Experience and familiarity with a wide variety of legal technology tools and systems, including AI-based solutions.
Ability to view issues holistically and operate as a "business owner," not just as a lawyer, and takes an expansive view of any review
Good judgment determining which areas require high involvement and which can be delegated with more independence
Ability to break complex problems into component parts, identifying which components require input from other teams or more senior leaders
Ability to manage and lead team resources creatively and efficiently, and handle escalations from the business collaboratively and cooperatively, to achieve reasonable outcomes
Exceptional and pragmatic organizational, project management, problem-solving and prioritization skills
Flexibility and eagerness to be readily available and work hard with a positive attitude in a fast-paced global environment and meet tight deadlines (especially at quarter-end)
The ability to think and execute both strategically and tactically, without over-optimizing for outcomes that benefit or are easier for oneself or one's team
Highly effective interpersonal skills with the ability to work with a wide variety of people at all levels inside and outside the organization
Service-oriented, responsive, professional and strong integrity

Nice To Haves

Experience working with highly regulated cloud customers (e.g., FinServ, healthcare, etc.) and Public Sector entities, and knowledge of emerging developments in the legal landscape for artificial intelligence

Responsibilities

Lead a team of commercial attorneys and other legal professionals, providing mentorship, guidance, and support for high-quality and continuing improvement of legal services to project-manage, structure, negotiate, and close very complex sales agreements and other transactional documents
Partner closely with Sales teams primarily, and with departments across the organization that include Finance, Security, Product, Engineering, Professional Services, and Support, on transactions that drive company revenue
Operate at the intersection of Sales, Professional Services, Finance, Product, Engineering, Alliances, and Support teams to proactively identify and address risks across evolving business initiatives, helping the company to move quickly while maintaining a thoughtful, risk-based balanced approach
Effectively manage and prioritize a high volume of concurrent matters in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
Partner closely with Legal Operations to implement scalable processes, tools, self-service, AI-driven workflows, and automation that improve efficiency, reduce cycle times, provide actionable data, and enable the commercial legal team to operate at Snowflake’s velocity
Own commercial legal process from intake, resourcing, and execution, meeting or exceeding internal service level objectives and KPI tracking; generate quarterly reports for executive staff
Lead the commercial legal team that supports the company’s global procurement initiatives
Serve as a trusted advisor on both legal and business-related issues to senior business leaders, including risk areas for Snowflake, the underlying Snowflake service, AI/ML, privacy and security, ensuring alignment and efficient deal execution
Manage risk and ensure business and compliance needs are accurately reflected in agreements
Collaborate with internal and external financial teams and auditors to recommend contracting guidelines, policies, and escalations/exceptions processes to ensure deal structures and clauses support company booking and revenue recognition targets
Partner with internal teams and outside counsel as necessary to support and advise the cross-functional business Sales teams on establishing gating and best practices for selling access to current and new products in multiple markets
Respond promptly to the demands of an active technology sales team and their management
Develop and deliver training on legal issues and contract processes
Support continuous improvements of commercial legal playbooks, sales resources, forms, policies and processes to help streamline, simplify and automate our contracting processes
Keep abreast of the rapidly evolving legal landscape affecting our expanding portfolio of service features
Handle escalations from other groups and effectively resolve conflicts
Work well in a fast-paced, dynamic work environment
A successful candidate will be able to forge strong relationships with Snowflake customers, as well internal clients and cross-functional groups within Snowflake, including sales, professional services and alliances. The right candidate will be flexible, fun, hard-working and have the desire to be impactful, as a key driver to Snowflake’s continued growth and success.