Commercial Counsel, Procurement & Partnerships
This client is fast growing, buys a lot and partners with a lot of companies. They need a Commercial Counsel who owns the paper on both sides. You will run vendor contracts, model and compute agreements, privacy terms, and partner deals. You will use AI to move at roughly 10 times the standard speed.
What you’ll do
- Own the buy side. Draft and negotiate vendor MSAs, order forms, SOWs, and renewals end-to-end. You will handle the largest and most technical spend categories.
- Own vendor privacy. Draft and negotiate DPAs, sub-processor terms, SCCs, and transfer impact assessments.
- Land partnerships. Draft and negotiate reseller, referral, affiliate, agency, systems integrator, marketplace, and co-marketing agreements. Cover revenue share, brand use, support obligations, and data flows between the parties.
- Coordinate the review chain. Route deals through Security, Finance, Compliance, and Data Protection. Hold the tiering model so small low-risk purchases stay fast and large and risky purchases get real scrutiny.
- Raise the floor. Build fallback positions, standard vendor addenda, intake automation, and clause libraries. Use AI tools to cut cycle time.
- Keep it audit-ready. Keep records clean in the CLM. Track the signing authority matrix, renewal dates, notice periods, and surviving obligations.
- Translate regulation. Stay ahead of the EU AI Act, GDPR, the Data Act, and DORA. Turn each requirement into a clear contract position for both vendors and partners.
What we’re looking for
- Relevant experience. You have 8 or more years of legal experience. At least 3 of those years are in SaaS or AI, ideally at Series B to D stage. You have closed six-figure and seven-figure vendor and partner deals.
- Buy-side depth. You know vendor paper well. You can spot the usual traps in liability caps, auto-renewal, price escalators, minimum commitments, and true-up mechanics. You can walk away from a bad deal and say why.
- Privacy fluency. You are comfortable as a controller and as a processor. You can run an Article 28 analysis, a transfer assessment, and a sub-processor onboarding without outside help on routine matters.
- AI governance. You can explain the difference between an LLM provider and an AI system deployer. You can allocate EU AI Act obligations across a supply chain in contract language.
- Partnership judgment. You understand channel economics. You can structure revenue share, exclusivity, territory, and termination in a way that survives a partner going quiet.
- Automation-minded. You have a builder mentality. You use AI daily to speed up drafting and review. You contribute to shared playbooks and repositories.
- Cross-functional operator. You work well with Finance on total cost of ownership, with Security on SOC 2 and access reviews, and with Product on data flows.
- Commercial judgment. You frame risk and tradeoffs as a business partner. You explain issues from a business perspective.
- Pragmatic risk tolerance. You make high-stakes decisions with imperfect facts. You balance long-term protection against speed.
- Bias for action and brevity. You prefer a quick call or a short written answer over a long memo.
This role is inside of IR35, you will be expected to contract via an umbrella company.