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Exa is building a search engine for the AI era, having raised $250M in Series C funding (led by a16z) at a $2.2B valuation. The company's Search API powers AI agents, Fortune 500 companies, and AI labs, disrupting an industry unchanged since the 1990s. The team of ~100 includes talent from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, and successful founders.
As an early legal hire, you will help scale Exa's legal function and partner closely with go-to-market and other teams to negotiate and close enterprise customer deals. Your primary focus will be the East Coast, EMEA, and APJ regions. Beyond deal work, you'll handle data licensing, procurement, and other commercial matters. As an early hire, you'll shape the legal templates, playbooks, and processes that form the company's foundation. You'll also provide substantial support in compliance, data privacy, and legal operations.
Key responsibilities include drafting, reviewing, and negotiating complex commercial agreements (customer contracts, data licensing, vendor agreements); partnering with GTM teams to enable deal velocity and provide practical legal guidance; building and scaling legal infrastructure including contract templates and playbooks; and providing guidance on compliance, data privacy, and legal operations.
The role requires working from either the San Francisco or New York office 5 days per week, though the company encourages applications from candidates who may need flexibility for a period of time.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Law degree (JD, LLB, or equivalent) and local licensing requirements met to work as in-house counsel in your base location
- At least 3–5 years of legal experience with substantial commercial legal experience in EMEA and APJ
- Experience working effectively across time zones, particularly with EMEA and APJ teams
- Experience building processes and systems from the ground up
- Experience leveraging AI tools in daily work
- Excellent communication skills and ability to translate legal advice for cross-functional teams
- Alignment with company values of humility, urgency, and agency
- Self-starter mentality and ability to thrive in a fast-paced, small-team environment
