What are the responsibilities and job description for the Corporate Counsel position at Ginkgo Bioworks?
Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe's growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.
Ginkgo Introduction: Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is the world leader in automation of biological workflows. We offer autonomous laboratories that replace manual laboratory work with robotics in the lab and have also built an in-house autonomous lab on which we run our own programs, as well as, make available to companies and organizations for use as a "cloud lab." These innovations allow scientists to run more experiments, run them faster, and more reliably, accelerating scientific discovery across multiple industries.
Team Introduction: As a member of our Corporate Legal Team, you will be focused on providing creative solutions to help drive these groundbreaking endeavors at Ginkgo, and we're seeking a talented, motivated, and energetic Corporate Counsel to join our team. Candidates should have enthusiasm for exploring with internal clients business-oriented solutions to problems, in a manner that incorporates sound legal advice. In particular, you'll support the growth of our business by overseeing business development transactions, supporting and advising our operations, leading and negotiating agreements, engaging with existing collaborators, architecting the legal framework for new offerings and more. With your in-depth legal experience in supporting business development, logistics, and customer relationships in the life sciences and biotechnology space, your role will be critical to Ginkgo's success.
Qualifications:
- BA/BS degree
- JD and licensed to practice law in the United States
- 3 years' experience practicing law in a law firm and/or a corporation
- Expectation to be on-site 5 days/week
Responsibilities:
- Lead and negotiate a wide range of agreements with customers, vendors, industry partners, and suppliers-including hardware purchasing agreements, collaboration and licensing agreements, software and SaaS agreements, master service agreements, material transfer agreements, and procurement contracts.
- Engage cross-functionally with business development, commercial operations, finance, human resources, and technical program teams to provide balanced legal advice that manages risk while enabling business opportunity in a compliant manner.
- Transact across our several business units by reviewing term sheets, conducting diligence activities, and drafting and negotiating transaction documents from start to finish.
- Strengthen Ginkgo's legal infrastructure by growing our internal repository of agreement templates, models, guidances, and professional development materials.
- Guide commercial operations and alliance management to establish and maintain strong partnerships with existing customers, collaborators, and strategic counterparts.
- Review technical and logistical materials to support our business development and program teams, ensuring compliance across associated transactions and new offerings.
- Optimize the responsible use of generative AI and other legal technology tools to accelerate and systematize workflows, while managing multiple deals and matters simultaneously in a fast-paced, constantly evolving environment.
- Work collaboratively across Ginkgo's commercial, technical, and legal teams to support our lab automation focus-speaking clearly and directly with multiple stakeholders to create consensus and assign ownership for complex initiatives.
What You'll Bring:
- Grounded expertise with a minimum of 3 years working as a lawyer in a legal environment, with a JD required; years of experience in a high-pressure law firm setting will be considered when determining minimum experience. Law firm and in-house experience preferred.
- In-depth experience with complex transactions, including software and technology agreements, licenses, material transfers, and collaborations, as well as general corporate transactions such as stock purchase agreements, investor agreements, and services agreements.
- Nimble and adaptable work style, with the ability to discern between low-impact and high-impact efforts and make wise decisions about time management in a dynamic environment.
- Keen project leadership, with ample experience managing programs with company-wide impact that require significant indirect and cross-functional influence, while directing resources efficiently with cost control in mind.
- Good judgment and a reputation for making balanced decisions that weigh risk against business opportunity, paired with a history of honest, direct, and timely communication of issues as they arise.
- Ownership mentality with a can-do attitude and humble approach to work allocation-independently identifying matters that need attention, maintaining diligent knowledge management, and ensuring strong communication and collaboration with internal and external counterparts. Dedication to making biology easier to engineer.
It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.
The base salary range for this role is $144,400-$217,200. Actual pay within this range will depend on a candidate's skills, expertise, and experience. We also offer company stock awards, a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental & vision coverage, health spending accounts, voluntary benefits, leave of absence policies, 401(k) program with employer contribution, 8 paid holidays in addition to a full-week winter shutdown and unlimited Paid Time Off policy.
Ginkgo has implemented a return to office policy effective October 1, 2025 with required in-office days 5x per week. Some teams may require to be onsite 4-5 days per week and this will be discussed as part of the interview process. This policy applies to all employees who live within 50 miles of Ginkgo's offices in Boston, MA, Emeryville, CA and West Sacramento, CA.
We feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.
We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.
It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees, employment applicants, and EOE disability/vet.
Salary : $144,400 - $217,200