Head of Legal

Prime Intellect • Full-time • San Francisco, California, United States • 3d ago

Own Your Intelligence

Prime Intellect is building the open superintelligence stack: the infrastructure frontier AI labs build internally, made available to every ambitious AI team.

Our platform, Lab, unifies compute, environments, evaluations, secure sandboxes, high-performance training, and deployment into one full-stack system for post-training at frontier scale - from SFT and RL to tool use, agent workflows, and continuously improving production models. We are building open frontier AI: open-source models trained end to end for long-horizon tasks like autonomous research, and the full-stack platform our own research team uses to build them. The next generation of AI companies, enterprises, and research teams do not just need more GPUs. They need the ability to turn their own workflows, tools, data, and feedback loops into superintelligence they own.

Prime Intellect has raised $150M in total funding from Founders Fund, Radical Ventures, NVIDIA, and exceptional AI, infrastructure, and enterprise operators — including Andrej Karpathy, Dwarkesh Patel, and leaders and founders from Ramp, Perplexity, Harvey, Mercor, Zapier, Datadog, Cognition, OpenAI, Thinking Machines, Together AI, SemiAnalysis, LangChain, Browserbase, Cloudflare, Sierra, Databricks, Airbnb, OpenRouter, Standard Intelligence, Fleet, Core Auto, and more. We are looking for people who want to build at the intersection of frontier research, real infrastructure, and go-to-market for a category that does not fully exist yet.

Your Role

Prime Intellect operates at the commercial center of one of the most consequential markets in technology. We negotiate nine- and ten-figure compute commitments with neoclouds and hyperscalers globally. We sign enterprise contracts with researchers, startups, and Fortune 500s consuming compute at scale. We ship open-source models and infrastructure that shape how the AI ecosystem develops. The legal architecture underneath all of this is a strategic function — not a downstream review process — and the Head of Legal owns it.

You will build and own the legal function at Prime Intellect end-to-end: commercial contracts across customers and suppliers, corporate governance, fundraising, IP and open-source strategy, regulatory positioning, and the operational systems that let legal scale alongside the company. You'll partner directly with leadership on the deals, structures, and decisions that define what Prime Intellect can do.

This is a builder role. We're at the stage where the legal function is being defined — playbooks, templates, contract management infrastructure, outside counsel relationships, compliance posture. The person who steps into this seat will set the foundations that the company runs on for years.

Responsibilities

Commercial Contracts

Own the commercial contract function end-to-end: customer MSAs, DPAs, order forms, enterprise agreements, and the playbooks that let the company close deals quickly without compromising on terms
Negotiate and structure compute supply contracts with neoclouds, hyperscalers, and datacenter operators globally — reserved capacity agreements, MSAs, vendor financing arrangements, and the contractual architecture around our largest commitments
Build the contract templates, playbooks, and CLM infrastructure that let the company scale commercial volume without scaling friction proportionally
Partner closely with Sales and the Compute team on deal structuring and negotiation strategy

Corporate & Governance

Own corporate governance: board materials, written consents, equity grants, cap table management, and the governance cadence that scales with the company
Lead legal workstreams on fundraising rounds, including diligence, documentation, and execution
Manage stock administration, equity plan governance, 409A coordination, and equity-related compliance
Build M&A readiness over time — clean cap table, organized contracts, defensible IP positioning, audit-ready documentation

IP & Open Source

Own Prime Intellect's open-source legal strategy: model weights licensing, contributor agreements, repository governance, and the IP architecture around our research and product output
Build the framework for IP allocation in customer contracts — particularly around model training, fine-tuning, and derivative work
Manage trademark, patent, and broader IP strategy as the company grows

Regulatory & Compliance

Own Prime Intellect's positioning on the regulatory frameworks shaping AI infrastructure: export controls, AI-specific regulations (EU AI Act, US executive orders), data privacy (GDPR, CCPA), and the compliance regimes our enterprise customers require
Build the compliance posture that supports enterprise sales: SOC 2, security policies, data processing addenda, and the documentation customers expect from a serious infrastructure provider
Partner with the security and engineering teams on compliance program execution

Function Building

Manage outside counsel relationships and rationalize what's done in-house vs. externally — building the right balance of speed, expertise, and cost
Build the team as the company scales — first hire likely a senior commercial counsel within 6–12 months, then specialized hires as needs emerge
Establish the legal operations infrastructure: CLM, contract templates, playbooks, knowledge management

What We're Looking For

8–12+ years of legal experience, ideally combining 3–5 years at a top tier firm with substantial in-house experience at a high-growth technology company
Strong commercial instincts — you negotiate to enable deals, not just to manage risk. You understand how contract structure shapes business outcomes, and you bring solutions, not just issue lists
Deep experience with commercial contracts at scale — enterprise customer agreements, large vendor or supplier contracts, and the operational infrastructure that supports commercial volume
Familiarity with consumption-based or usage-based business models and the contract structures that support them
Comfortable owning a legal function: setting strategy, managing outside counsel, building infrastructure, and hiring the team
Operates with high judgment under uncertainty — you can make calls quickly when the stakes are real and the playbook doesn't exist
Comfortable engaging directly with senior counterparts at customers, suppliers, investors, and partners
High ownership — you see gaps and build the fix before anyone asks
Comfortable in ambiguity and speed; this company and this market move fast
AI-native in how you work: you use LLMs, automation, and programmatic tools to move faster

Bonus:

Direct experience with cloud, infrastructure, or AI/ML company contracts
Familiarity with compute supply contracts, datacenter agreements, or large infrastructure financing structures
Experience with open-source licensing, contributor agreements, and IP strategy in AI/ML contexts
Working knowledge of export controls, AI regulation, or international technology compliance
Prior experience as the first or second legal hire at a high-growth company

Why This Role

The legal architecture underneath AI infrastructure is being defined right now, and the people building it at the leading companies will shape how the industry operates for the next decade. You'll be the principal legal voice in the rooms where Prime Intellect's largest commercial, strategic, and structural decisions get made — and you'll build a function that sets the foundation for the company's next several years of growth.

What We Offer