Legal Counsel (AI Infrastructure)

Location: San Francisco, CA; on-site or hybrid. Remote work may be considered for exceptional candidates based in the United States.

Company

hirify.global develops vLLM as an AI inference engine, working at the intersection of machine learning models and hardware to make inference faster and more affordable.

What you will do

• Serve as the first in-house legal hire and provide primary legal support across the company.
• Draft, negotiate, and close enterprise customer, cloud and compute vendor, partnership, and technology licensing agreements.
• Build and lead hirify.global's legal function, including internal ownership of key matters and lightweight legal processes.
• Coordinate complex workstreams with outside counsel and maintain alignment with leadership, product, engineering, go-to-market, and operations teams.
• Advise on legal issues connected to open-source LLM inference, AI infrastructure, data privacy, export controls, and emerging AI regulation.

Requirements

• J.D. or equivalent, with active bar admission and good standing in at least one relevant jurisdiction.
• At least 6 years of legal experience at a technology, infrastructure, or AI company, or at a top law firm advising sophisticated technology clients.
• Experience building or scaling a legal function from 0 to 1, or working as the sole or first lawyer at a fast-growing company.
• Strong commercial contracting experience and the ability to independently draft, negotiate, and close complex agreements.
• Experience managing outside counsel, applying strong business judgment, and translating legal complexity into practical guidance.
• Role is based in San Francisco for on-site or hybrid work; remote candidates must be based in the United States.

Nice to have

• Experience with AI inference, model serving, GPU cloud, developer infrastructure, or open-source business models.
• Familiarity with open-source software licensing and community-driven open-source projects.
• Experience with hyperscalers, hardware vendors, enterprise security, compliance, and data-handling requirements.
• Experience handling financings, equity and employment matters, immigration, and corporate governance at an early-stage startup.
• Experience building legal templates, playbooks, and self-service resources for product, engineering, and go-to-market teams.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on role with direct ownership of legal matters in a technically complex, fast-moving startup.
• Close collaboration with company leadership and product, engineering, go-to-market, and operations teams.
• Competitive base salary and meaningful equity, determined based on background, skills, and experience.
• Health, dental, and vision benefits.
• 401(k) company match.
• Visa sponsorship is available on a case-by-case basis.