Sr. Counsel, Commercial and Data

Company Overview:

We are building Protege to solve the biggest unmet need in AI — getting access to the right training data. The process today is time intensive, incredibly expensive, and often ends in failure. The Protege platform facilitates the secure, efficient, and privacy-centric exchange of AI training data.

Solving AI’s data problem is a generational opportunity. We’re backed by world-class investors and already powering partnerships with some of the most ambitious teams in AI. The company that succeeds will be one of the largest in AI — and in tech.

We’re a lean, fast-moving, high-trust team of builders who are obsessed with velocity and impact. Our culture is built for people who thrive on ambiguity, own outcomes, and want to shape the future of data and AI.

About the Role

We're hiring our second attorney: a hands-on counsel who will work directly with the CLO and own a large share of Protege's day-to-day legal work. This is not a narrow specialist seat. On any given week you'll move between a data licensing agreement with a hospital system, a de-identification question under HIPAA, an NDA for a frontier lab, a vendor BAA, and a cross-border transfer analysis — often several of these in the same day.

The two areas where you'll spend most of your time:

Commercial contracts.

Data license agreements, SOWs, NDAs, BAAs, DPAs, and vendor agreements — drafting, redlining, and negotiating with counterparties ranging from health systems and data aggregators to the largest AI builders in the world.

Data & Privacy.

HIPAA/CCPA/GDPR and de-identification strategy, business associate posture, privacy policies, cross-border data transfers, and emerging AI regulation. Privacy at Protege isn't a compliance checkbox — it's core to the product on multiple domains.

You'll be the person our business, partnerships, and engineering teams come to first. The legal function here runs through Slack, Notion, and Google Drive, with other AI tooling built into triage and drafting. Requests come in fast, priorities shift, and much of the structure you'll work within is structure you'll help build.

What You’ll Do:

• Draft, negotiate, and close commercial agreements across our data supply and demand sides — data licensing, SOWs, NDAs, BAAs, DPAs, and novel arrangements that don't have a template yet.
• Counsel teams across the company on data privacy: HIPAA, de-identification, consent, provenance, GDPR/CCPA, and AI-specific regulation as it lands.
• Triage and run a high-volume legal queue — dozens of active matters at a time — deciding what needs deep work, what needs a fast answer, and what needs outside counsel.
• Work directly with technical teams and technical counterparties, translating between legal risk and how the product actually work–in plain and crisp communication style
• Manage and coordinate outside counsel on specialist matters, keeping the work moving, tightly scoped, and the spend sensible.
• Build the legal infrastructure as you go: templates, playbooks, intake, and AI-assisted workflows that make the whole function faster.

What Success Looks Like

30 days: Learn and Build Relationships

Meet and partner with the teams who use legal most — partnerships, BD, healthcare, product, and engineering — plus our outside counsel across commercial, privacy, and corporate, to understand intake, escalation paths, where the volume comes from, and where the bottlenecks are.

Get fluent in how we run: Slack-based intake, the Notion legal tracker, our template library, and the AI tooling we use for triage and drafting.

Take your first sets of NDAs, SOW redlines, and privacy questions end-to-end with CLO review.

60 days: Develop and Cultivate

Co-own the day-to-day commercial queue — NDAs, SOWs, DPAs, and BAAs move through you without hand-holding, at turnaround times the business can plan around. We optimize for speed and clarity.

Run your first data license negotiations end-to-end, from intake through signature.

Take ownership of at least one standing privacy workstream (e.g., de-identification posture, cross-border transfers, or privacy policy maintenance).

90 days: Make an Impact

Co-own the commercial and privacy queue, with the CLO engaged on strategy and novel structures.

Ship at least three improvements to our legal infrastructure — a template, playbook, or AI-assisted workflow — that measurably speeds up how legal work gets done here.

Be the trusted first call for the business: colleagues come to you directly, and get practical answers fast.

What You Bring

• We care about what you've accomplished, not how many years you spent in a particular seat:
• You've negotiated and closed complex technology or data transactions end-to-end — ideally including data licensing, and ideally opposite technical counterparties.
• You've owned real pieces of a privacy program but see the whole picture and how it all hangs together: HIPAA and de-identification decisions, GDPR/CCPA compliance, DPAs and BAAs — not just reviewed someone else's work. And you keep up to date on emerging regulations and have a sense of not only where the puck is but where it’s going. Plus, you understand not just the what but the why behind key statutes.
• You've run a high-volume legal queue where you were personally accountable for turnaround — you know how to triage, when 80% today beats 100% next week, and when to slow down because it matters.
• You thrive in ambiguity and are proactive in finding the information you need to make informed decisions and guide the business forward.
• You've operated in a fast-moving, scrappy, high-growth environment where priorities changed weekly and structure didn't exist until you built it — templates, playbooks, intake, or workflows that outlasted you. Extreme ownership is a mentality we embrace.
• You work the way we work: Slack, Notion, Google Drive, and AI systems in daily use. Someone who works exclusively in Word attachments and email chains will struggle here; someone tech-native will thrive.
• You bring high EQ to hard conversations — counseling colleagues under deadline pressure and negotiating across cultures and company sizes with practical, calm, solution-focused advice. You communicate in bullet points rather than paragraphs.
• JD and active bar membership in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.

What We're Looking For

Minimum qualifications:

• 6+ years of relevant legal experience with significant depth in technology transactions and privacy (healthcare/HIPAA/GDPR/CCPA experience strongly preferred).
• Speed and throughput. You turn documents fast, juggle many matters simultaneously, and know when 80% today beats 100% next week.
• Genuine comfort with ambiguity. You're self-directed, you make judgment calls with incomplete information, and you don't wait to be handed a process — you build one.
• Fluency with modern tools. Our legal work lives in Slack, Notion, and Google Drive, and we use AI systems daily for triage and drafting. Someone who works exclusively in Word attachments and email chains will struggle here; someone who's tech-native will thrive.
• High EQ. You'll counsel colleagues under deadline pressure and negotiate with counterparties across cultures and company sizes. Practical, calm, solution-focused advice is the job. No jargon.
• JD and active bar membership in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.

Preferred qualifications

• — we encourage you to apply if you meet some but not all of these: In-house experience at a technology company shipping products with novel legal risk, ideally involving AI, training data, or health data.
• Experience negotiating data licensing agreements or other data-centric commercial deals.
• Familiarity with de-identification standards (Expert Determination, Safe Harbor) and the healthcare data ecosystem.
• Experience being an early or solo in-house lawyer — building intake, templates, and outside counsel relationships from scratch.
• Protege Values
• Pass the Loved Ones’ Test
• We act with integrity and do the right thing — especially when it’s hard and no one is watching.
• Always Find a Way
• We are resourceful, resilient builders who solve hard problems and push through obstacles.
• Go Fast and Grow Fast
• Velocity matters. We move with urgency, learn quickly, and continuously improve as individuals and as a company.
• Practice Kindness and Candor
• We communicate directly and respectfully, building trust through honest feedback and genuine care for one another.
• Deliver Together
• We win as one team. Collaboration, accountability, and shared ownership drive our success.
• Own the Outcome. Hone the Craft.
• We take pride in our work, sweat the details, and continuously raise the bar for excellence.