What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Legal Counsel position at Genesis AI?
What You’ll Do
- Act as day-to-day legal partner to founders and leadership across company decisions
- Draft, review, and negotiate commercial agreements including customer, partner, vendor, and research collaborations
- Support hiring and people operations including employment agreements, contractor arrangements, policies, and compliance
- Manage intellectual property matters including NDAs, invention assignment, open source use, and coordination with outside patent counsel
- Handle corporate governance, board materials, subsidiary setup, equity administration, and related documentation
- Support fundraising and financing processes alongside outside counsel
- Advise on regulatory and operational risk related to robotics, autonomy, data, and deployment in the physical world
- Develop practical policies and lightweight processes that enable speed while maintaining compliance
- Coordinate and manage outside counsel across corporate, employment, IP, and regulatory matters
- Provide clear, actionable guidance to non-legal teams
- Operate as a hands-on generalist and take ownership of issues end-to-end
- J.D. and active membership in the California State Bar
- Experience at a law firm or in-house role covering multiple legal domains
- Comfort operating as a generalist across corporate, commercial, employment, and IP matters
- Familiarity with French law and regulatory frameworks, particularly as they relate to corporate structure, employment, or cross-border operation
- Experience negotiating technology, commercial, or partnership agreements
- Ability to translate legal risk into practical business guidance
- High ownership, autonomy, and sound judgment
- Ability to work closely with engineers, researchers, and operations teams
- Comfort operating in a fast-moving and ambiguous environment
- Strong written and verbal communication
- Ideally: Experience at a startup or high-growth technology company
- Ideally: Experience supporting venture financings and board governance
- Ideally: Familiarity with hardware, robotics, autonomy, or AI companies
- Ideally: Experience building legal processes from zero and scaling them over time
- Ideally: Experience working with intellectual property in Asia