Counsel / Associate Director, Sr. Counsel

The Opportunity

insitro is a physical AI company dedicated to unlocking causal human biology and accelerating the delivery of better medicines to patients. Our unique Virtual Human™ platform identifies novel, high-impact genetic intervention points, which our TherML™ platform translates into therapeutics, whether small molecules, biologics, or oligos. With multiple programs in metabolic disease and neuroscience advancing toward the clinic, and our first CTA/IND submission slated for the second half of this year, we are at a pivotal inflection point.

We are seeking a pragmatic, high-output attorney to join our Legal team as Counsel or Senior Counsel, with level set by experience. You will be the daily legal partner to research, lab and technical operations, IT, procurement, finance, and HR, covering commercial and operational matters, compute and infrastructure. This is a high-volume role on a small team: you will own your matters end to end, build and enhance the templates and processes the company runs on, and have an opportunity to grow your scope as insitro grows.

You will also be practicing at the frontier of two fields that are both moving fast, drug discovery and artificial intelligence, often on questions that have no settled answer yet. The Legal department here is small, senior, and low-ego, with a genuine seat at the table: scientists, engineers, and the management team come to us early rather than at the end. We are building the function itself, including how AI reshapes legal work, so you will have real influence over the tooling, templates, and processes insitro uses for years. Based in South San Francisco, this position reports directly to the Associate General Counsel and offers an in-person hybrid schedule of three days per week.

Responsibilities

Commercial & Operational Contracting

• Own the Contract Flow: Draft, review, and negotiate the agreements that run the company day to day, including CDAs, MSAs and SOWs, consulting agreements, and vendor, supplier, and equipment terms.
• Be the Front Door: Serve as a primary legal contact for the business and R&D teams, triaging incoming requests, setting expectations, driving matters to close on business timelines, and escalating issues to the AGC as needed. Provide business-oriented advice colleagues can act on without a follow-up meeting.
• Partner with HR: Supporting onboarding and offboarding processes, as well as contractor and similar engagements.

Research & Technical Partnership

• Translate Science into Terms: Support lab operations and R&D teams on MTAs, research services agreements, and reagent and instrument purchases, working directly with scientists to turn experimental plans into workable contract terms.
• Help Advance the Pipeline: Support CMC and Research & Development teams on CRO and CDMO agreements.
• Contract for Compute: Negotiate the cloud, compute, and infrastructure agreements that underpin insitro's machine learning platforms.

Legal Operations & Scale

• Build for Scale: Own and improve contract templates, trainings, playbooks, approval workflows, and CLM tooling so routine work moves faster with less legal involvement.
• Build and deploy AI Tools: Put AI tools to work inside the Legal function to accelerate contract review, drafting, and knowledge management.
• Counsel and Advise: Depending on your experience and capabilities, scope may also include data privacy and compliance support, clinical trial contracting, corporate and governance support, or mentorship of junior colleagues.

About You

Experience & Qualifications

• Proven Tenure: 2–7+ years practicing law, with a combination of law firm and in in-house experience or exclusively in-house experience.
• Bar Admission: J.D. from an accredited U.S. law school and admission in good standing to at least one State bar, preferably California, or eligibility for California registered in-house counsel status.
• Contracting at Volume: Demonstrated track record drafting and negotiating commercial and technology agreements at volume, with increasing independence.
• AI in Practice: Proven track record using AI tools in legal practice, contract review and drafting, research, and workflow automation, with sound judgment about their limits and appropriate use.

Core Competencies

• Dynamic Self-Starter: You prioritize and advance many matters at once under the resource and time constraints of a small, fast-paced environment.
• Momentum Builder: You like variety, move multiple matters forward without waiting to be asked, and know what deserves attention first.
• Sharp Business Judgment: You distill complex legal topics into clear, actionable guidance.
• Trusted Partner: You bring discretion, professionalism, and attention to detail, plus a collaborative style that builds trust across the company and with third parties.

Preferred Qualifications

• Life Sciences Context: Experience in life sciences or biotech, and comfort working directly with scientists and engineers.
• Technical Skills: Comfort using, or eagerness to learn, AI tools and workflows in legal practice, including contract review and drafting, research, and workflow automation.
• Technical Contracting Depth: Familiarity with data use and acquisition agreements, AI/ML legal issues, cloud and compute contracting, and open source licensing.
• Employment & Legal Tech: Prior exposure to employment law matters and to immigration in coordination with outside counsel, and experience selecting or administering CLM or legal workflow tools.

Compensation & Benefits at insitro

Our target starting salary for successful US-based applicants for this role is $204,000 - $240,000. To determine starting pay, we consider multiple job-related factors including a candidate's skills, education and experience, market demand, business needs, and internal parity. We may also adjust this range in the future based on market data.

This role is eligible for participation in our Annual Performance Bonus Plan (based on company targets by role level and annual company performance) and our Equity Incentive Plan, subject to the terms of those plans and associated policies.

In addition, insitro also provides our employees:

• 401(k) plan with employer matching for contributions
• Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage as well as mental health and well-being support
• Open, flexible vacation policy
• Paid parental leave of at least 16 weeks to support parents who give birth, and 10 weeks for a new parent (inclusive of birth, adoption, fostering, etc)
• Quarterly budget for books and online courses for self-development
• New hire stipend for home office setup
• Monthly cell phone & internet stipend
• Access to free onsite baristas and daily lunch for employees who are either onsite or hybrid
• Access to a free commuter bus network that provides transport to and from our South San Francisco HQ from locations all around the Bay Area

insitro is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.

We believe diversity, equity, and inclusion need to be at the foundation of our culture. We work hard to bring together diverse teams–grounded in a wide range of expertise and life experiences–and work even harder to ensure those teams thrive in inclusive, growth-oriented environments supported by equitable company and team practices. All candidates can expect equitable treatment, respect, and fairness throughout the interview process.

#LI-Hybrid

Please be aware of recruitment scams: we never request payments, all recruitment communications are from @insitro.com, and if in doubt, contact us at [email protected].

About insitro

insitro is a drug discovery and development company using machine learning (ML) and data at scale to decode biology for transformative medicines. At the core of insitro’s approach is the convergence of in-house generated multi-modal cellular data and high-content phenotypic human cohort data. We rely on these data to develop ML-driven, predictive disease models that uncover underlying biologic state and elucidate critical drivers of disease. These powerful models rely on extensive biological and computational infrastructure and allow insitro to advance novel targets and patient biomarkers, design therapeutics and inform clinical strategy. insitro is advancing a wholly owned and partnered pipeline of insights and therapeutics in neuroscience and metabolism. Since launching in 2018, insitro has raised over $700 million from top tech, biotech and crossover investors, and from collaborations with pharmaceutical partners. For more information on insitro, please visit www.insitro.com.