Legal Operations Lead

About the Role

You'll build and own the legal operating system at HUD, a fast-growing AI infrastructure company. This role combines hands-on contracting work with systems thinking—you'll draft agreements one day and redesign processes to minimize manual work the next. You'll be the operator who makes legal scalable as our volume and complexity of commercial agreements grows.

What You'll Do

• Own the end-to-end legal workflow, including intake, prioritization, approvals, escalation paths, document management, and outside-counsel coordination.
• Draft, review, and negotiate commercial agreements with buyers, data vendors, and partners, including MSAs, SOWs, data licenses, SLAs, NDAs, and vendor contracts.
• Build and refine templates and negotiation playbooks to handle recurring issues like data rights and usage restrictions consistently and quickly.
• Identify opportunities to automate or streamline high-volume legal workflows using software and AI while preserving human judgment for complex issues.
• Establish clear decision rules for what stays internal, what can be standardized or automated, and what escalates to founders or outside counsel.
• Manage outside counsel strategically to control spend, scope work efficiently, and reserve external lawyers for high-value or specialist matters.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in legal operations, contracts management, commercial operations, transactional legal work, or a combination at a fast-growing technology company.
• Strong proficiency drafting, reviewing, and negotiating commercial technology agreements with sound judgment on routine versus specialist issues.
• Experience with data licensing, IP-intensive transactions, marketplaces, or businesses where contractual rights tie closely to the product.
• Comfort with legal technology, workflow tools, and AI; genuine interest in using them to scale legal work.
• Strong commercial judgment to balance legal risk against speed, customer needs, and business priorities.
• Excellent written communication, attention to detail, and confidence to push back constructively on customers, vendors, and stakeholders.
• Legal training or law firm experience is a plus but not required; we prioritize operating and building systems over traditional counsel practice.

Compensation & Benefits

Competitive compensation, equity, and comprehensive benefits including top-tier medical, dental, and vision coverage. Lunch and dinner in office, company-wide holiday break, Equinox membership, 401k, commuter benefits, and unlimited access to AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor).

Location

On-site in San Francisco Bay Area or Singapore. Visa sponsorship and relocation support provided for strong candidates.