Senior Legal Counsel

About Generalist

At Generalist, we are on a mission to build general intelligence for the physical world and make it useful to everyone. We believe the industries and homes of the future will depend on humans and machines working together in new ways. Robots can help us build more and get more done.

We build embodied foundation models, starting with a focus on dexterity. This requires advancing the frontiers of data, models, and hardware, to enable robots to intelligently interact with the physical world.

The company embraces both large-scale AI and robotics as core to its DNA. Our team of researchers, roboticists, and company builders come from OpenAI, Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind, and other frontier labs—with a track record of shipping AI breakthroughs. Before Generalist, we pioneered large embodied multimodal models and vision-language-action models (PaLM-E, RT-2, Gemini Robotics), launched and scaled ChatGPT and GPT-4 to hundreds of millions of users, engineered the foundations of autonomous driving, built next-generation robots (Atlas, Spot, Stretch) and pushed the limits of what they can do (from parkour to manipulation, and testing robustness).

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

As Generalist’s first in-house legal hire, you will take broad ownership across commercial, corporate, privacy, and technology matters and help build the legal function as the company scales. You’ll work closely with company leadership and Applied AI & Partnerships while managing external counsel where specialized support is needed.

The ideal candidate has strong foundational experience in commercial and corporate law, but is also deeply interested in emerging technology. You should be comfortable working through questions where there may be limited precedent, particularly around AI, machine learning, data, privacy, intellectual property, and new technology business models.

This role is designed for an experienced, highly independent lawyer who wants to remain hands-on while taking on significant responsibility. For an exceptional candidate with the breadth and experience to serve as the company’s senior-most legal leader, we are open to leveling the role accordingly.

Responsibilities

• Commercial & strategic transactions: Draft, review, and negotiate commercial agreements, including strategic partnerships, customer and vendor contracts, pilots, SOWs, NDAs, and other technology transactions; support complex negotiations with Partnerships and company leadership.
• Corporate & fundraising: Support financings, fundraising, corporate governance, board and stockholder matters, diligence, and other corporate workstreams, coordinating with external counsel as needed.
• AI, data & technology: Advise on legal issues related to Generalist’s technology, including training data, data-use rights, models and fine-tunes, intellectual property, confidentiality and privacy, deployment, and other emerging AI and robotics issues.
• Legal advice & risk management: Serve as a practical legal advisor across the company, translating legal risk into clear recommendations that help teams move quickly and make sound decisions.
• Legal infrastructure & external counsel: Build scalable templates, playbooks, policies, and processes, and manage outside counsel where specialized support is needed.
• Emerging legal landscape: Stay current on developments in AI, LLMs, robotics, privacy, intellectual property, regulation, market practices, and contractual precedent, and take on new legal issues as they arise.

Minimum Qualifications

• JD and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar.
• 6–10+ years of relevant legal experience, including meaningful experience at a technology company, technology-focused law firm, or both.
• Strong experience drafting and negotiating commercial technology agreements.
• Ability to independently identify legal issues, assess risk, develop a recommendation, and drive matters to resolution without requiring significant day-to-day supervision.
• Strong grounding in corporate and commercial law, with the ability to work across a broad range of legal issues rather than specializing narrowly in a single area.
• Ability to understand complex technical concepts, work effectively with engineering and research teams, and advise on technology, data, intellectual property, privacy, or related legal issues.
• Excellent commercial judgment and an ability to give clear, practical advice rather than simply identifying legal risks.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex legal concepts clearly to non-lawyers.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment where the applicable law, market norms, and contractual precedent may still be developing.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in-house at an AI, machine learning, robotics, software, or other frontier technology company, especially growth-stage startups.
• Significant experience leading or supporting complex commercial deals, strategic transactions, financings, acquisitions, investments, and other high-value or high-impact legal transactions from structuring through execution.
• Experience negotiating agreements involving AI models, training data, data licensing, model outputs, fine-tuning, intellectual property, or other emerging technology issues.
• Familiarity with current commercial and legal practices in generative AI and LLM-related transactions.