Head of Commercial Counsel, (VP Level) San Francisco, CA (951-SLS)

Our client, a high-growth enterprise AI company, has exclusively retained Solutus Legal Search to hire its Head of Commercial Counsel. This is one of the most important hires at the company right now — a senior commercial legal leader who will own deal execution across a portfolio of large, complex enterprise customers while building the processes and team capacity to scale.

This is a player-coach role: deeply hands-on in the near term, with a path to grow into the General Counsel as the company scales. For the right candidate, the company is open to hiring at the General Counsel level. The successful candidate will report directly to the President and Co-Founder and manage an existing small but growing commercial counsel function. This is not a role for someone who wants to manage from a distance — the company is looking for a commercial legal leader who sees their job as enabling the business, not just protecting it. The role is based in San Francisco with a strong in-office culture — three days per week minimum.

• Own the full lifecycle of enterprise contract negotiation — MSAs, SaaS agreements, DPAs, order forms, and partnership contracts — with sophisticated counterparties including major banks, airlines, and financial services companies
• Resolve legal blockers on complex, high-value deals quickly and creatively, including navigating entrenched procurement and legal teams at large enterprises
• Develop and maintain scalable contract templates, fallback positions, and negotiation playbooks that keep the sales team moving without sacrificing company protection
• Manage and mentor existing commercial counsel, with the team expected to grow alongside revenue
• Advise on legal considerations unique to AI products: data privacy, model liability, output indemnification, and evolving AI regulation including the EU AI Act, CCPA, GDPR, and emerging U.S. state-level AI laws
• Partner with Product and Engineering on data use obligations, customer data handling, and security review processes
• Implement contract management systems and processes that scale with a rapidly growing sales pipeline

• 13+ years of commercial legal experience, with the bulk of it in-house at a high-growth enterprise SaaS or technology company
• Demonstrated track record negotiating complex enterprise agreements with large, sophisticated counterparties — particularly in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, telecom, or travel
• Experience navigating the organizational complexity of Fortune 100 legal and procurement teams
• Strong commercial instincts — understands revenue, deal structure, and risk trade-offs, not just legal exposure
• Player-coach mentality: equally comfortable diving into a redline and mentoring a junior attorney
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth environment without heavy infrastructure or support
• Prior experience managing or building a commercial legal team from scratch is preferred
• Big Law commercial transactions background before going in-house and AI-native company experience and EU AI Act familiarity are a plus