Senior Counsel, Commercial & Product — Thinking Machines Lab

About Thinking Machines

The mission of Thinking Machines is to build AI that extends human will and judgment. We are training frontier models with Inkling, developing Tinker to let people make models their own, and crafting interfaces that broaden human-AI communication. We believe the future worth building is human, and we're hiring people who want to build it.

About the Role

We’re looking for an attorney to lead the agreements that support our research and products, and support our compliance and counseling for those activities.

You’ll work directly with teams across research, engineering, product, go-to-market, security, safety, privacy, and product counseling to support agreements across a broad range of areas, including enterprise deals, data licensing and tech transactions, grants and research collaborations, product and safety partnerships, and open source considerations. Your work will shape how we partner with vendors, collaborators, and customers to develop and share our technology with the world. You’ll also support our counseling and compliance on our core AI research and products.

What You'll Do

• Advise research, engineering, product, and cross-functional partners on legal issues arising from agreements and partnerships supporting the development and release of advanced AI.
• Draft, negotiate, and review agreements across domains, including enterprise deals, data licensing and tech transactions, grants and research collaborations, product partnerships, safety partnerships, and novel arrangements.
• Partner closely with product, research, and go-to-market teams to support company timelines while also supporting core legal strategies.
• Own legal infrastructure–including developing playbooks, systems, automation, outside counsel relationships–to support deal velocity, efficiency, and quality.
• Support compliance and counseling on research, product, and partnership pipelines, operations, initiatives and launches.

Skills and Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

• 8+ years of relevant legal experience, with significant expertise in technology transactions and IP and privacy issues.
• Client counseling skills, with the ability to exercise judgment under uncertainty and communicate practical, solution-focused advice.
• Experience working directly with technical staff and technical counterparties.

Preferred qualifications—we encourage you to apply if you meet some but not all of these:

• In-house experience at a technology company shipping products with novel legal risk, ideally on legal issues for AI products, services, or research, with knowledge of the research development lifecycle
• Experience negotiating and drafting agreements involving enterprise technology products, data licensing, research collaborations and grant programs, safety partnerships, or product integrations, ideally for AI products, services, or research.
• Experience advising on open source licensing.
• Strong familiarity with global legal and regulatory frameworks in AI, data privacy, and intellectual property.

Logistics

• Location: This role is based in San Francisco, California.
• Compensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $300,000-$360,000 USD.
• Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.
• Benefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.

As set forth in Thinking Machines' Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.