Senior Legal Counsel, Product

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

We are looking for an experienced, technical, and business-minded Senior Counsel to enable Vercel’s product innovation and shipping velocity. You will partner closely with Engineering, Product and Design (”EPD”), Security, and other cross-functional teams to provide all aspects of legal support throughout the product development lifecycle, while also building out processes and programs as a foundational member of the Legal team. This is a senior individual contributor role that focuses on product counseling, and may also support commercial transactions from time to time. This position reports to the VP of Legal. This role is based in SF where we have a 3 day/week in-office requirement.

What it asks for · 10

• Admitted to the California Bar or eligible for Registered In-House Counsel exception and in good standing.
• 8+ years of legal experience, including 4+ years of product legal experience at a software company.
• Significant experience counseling product and engineering teams through the product development lifecycle from conception to launch and advising on the legal and regulatory aspects of product development in the software industry.
• Strong understanding of cloud services and general SaaS, PaaS, IaaS business practices and relevant global regulatory requirements.
• Able to quickly form and convincingly communicate a point of view, under time pressure and with imperfect information.
• Loves being a generalist and avoids silos. Will take on additional responsibilities and explore subjects outside of your core expertise where no job is too big or too small.
• Strong judgment and risk-assessment and mitigation skills, adapting legal requirements in creative and pragmatic ways.
• Can independently manage and negotiate technology agreements with customers, technology partners, and technology vendors.
• Prefers fast-paced, highly variable environments, with a proven track record of building new or improving existing processes at other hyper-growth companies.
• Enjoys mentoring and advising Legal teammates regardless of formal reporting lines.

Also a plus

• Computer science degree or technical background in software engineering for the web.
• Experience with commercial transactions, intellectual property, open source, platform safety
• Used Vercel’s products and services.

What the job covers

• Partner closely with EPD teams to enable cutting-edge product initiatives, balancing innovation and speed with responsible risk management and customer trust.
• Identify and drive resolution of issues related to privacy, data security, AI, platform safety, marketing, competition, intellectual property, and other legal and regulatory areas.
• Help translate evolving laws and market expectations into practical, actionable guidance.
• Work with cross-functional teams to build scalable processes and draft/maintain templates that allow Vercel to ship faster and smarter over time.
• Engage on special projects and provide legal support to sales, partnerships, procurement, M&A, and other teams as needed, particularly in transactions where nuanced product knowledge is critical.

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• product11×
• legal10×
• experience4×
• engineering3×
• processes3×
• product development3×
• regulatory3×
• requirements3×
• software3×
• technology3×
• advising2×
• aspects2×
• building2×
• commercial transactions2×
• counsel2×
• counseling2×

Counted from the posting after the mission statement and the legal notices are set aside. The ones near the top are the ones a screener is looking for.

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