What are the responsibilities and job description for the Head of Legal position at 7AI?
We’re hiring our first legal leader — someone to build the legal function from 0 → 1.
This is a rare opportunity to define what legal looks like at a high-growth company from the earliest stages. You’ll operate as both a strategic partner and a hands-on builder, working closely with leadership to shape how we take risk, support the business, and scale responsibly.
We’re looking for someone who brings strong judgment, clear opinions, and a builder mindset — someone excited to design the function, not just inherit it. As the company grows, this role will naturally expand in scope and impact alongside it.
What you’ll do
This is a rare opportunity to define what legal looks like at a high-growth company from the earliest stages. You’ll operate as both a strategic partner and a hands-on builder, working closely with leadership to shape how we take risk, support the business, and scale responsibly.
We’re looking for someone who brings strong judgment, clear opinions, and a builder mindset — someone excited to design the function, not just inherit it. As the company grows, this role will naturally expand in scope and impact alongside it.
What you’ll do
- Build the legal function from scratch — defining what needs to exist now vs. later
- Create scalable processes, templates, and systems that enable the company to move quickly
- Decide what to own in-house vs. outsource, and manage external counsel as needed
- Act as a strategic partner to leadership on risk, structure, and key business decisions
- Own and evolve core legal workflows across commercial contracts (customer vendor)
- Advise on product, data privacy, and regulatory considerations (especially in SaaS/AI contexts)
- Support corporate governance, entity management, and employment-related legal matters
- Reduce friction across teams by building lightweight, usable processes and clear guidance
- Lay the groundwork for scaling the legal function and evolving toward a future GC org
- 8 years of legal experience (mix of law firm and in-house strongly preferred)
- Experience working at or closely with startups, ideally in SaaS or tech
- Comfort operating as a team of one (at least initially)
- Strong business judgment — you know when to push, when to flex, and when to simplify
- A bias toward action and pragmatism over perfection
- Ability to translate complex legal concepts into clear, usable guidance
- Opinions about how a modern legal function should operate — and the ability to execute on them
- Experience as an early or first legal hire at a startup
- Familiarity with data/privacy, AI/ML, or emerging regulatory environments
- Experience supporting go-to-market teams (sales, partnerships, procurement)
- Interest in eventually building and leading a team