Counsel or Senior Counsel (AI)

Location: Hybrid in San Francisco or New York City, United States

Salary: $200,000–$275,000 per year plus equity; listed USD range applies to U.S.-based positions.

Company

Perplexity develops AI products and operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence, enterprise software, and search technology.

What you will do

• Draft, review, negotiate, and close commercial agreements including MSAs, SaaS and API agreements, DPAs, partnership agreements, procurement contracts, infrastructure agreements, and IP licenses.
• Provide practical legal counsel to sales, product, engineering, security, finance, compliance, and executive stakeholders.
• Advise on legal risks involving AI infrastructure, compute procurement, partnerships, enterprise deployments, and customer-specific compliance requirements.
• Address AI-related contractual issues such as acceptable use, data retention, training restrictions, output liability, and regulatory requirements.
• Build scalable legal infrastructure including contract templates, negotiation playbooks, fallback positions, CLM tools, and self-service workflows.
• Monitor regulations affecting enterprise AI and SaaS products and convert them into practical contract and policy guidance.

Requirements

• JD and active membership in good standing with a U.S. state bar required.
• At least 5 years of law firm and/or in-house experience negotiating complex commercial technology agreements.
• Strong knowledge of data privacy and security frameworks, including GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, SOC 2, and HIPAA.
• Experience negotiating DPAs and related compliance agreements.
• Clear communication with business and technical audiences, strong business judgment, and the ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment.
• Comfort with ambiguity, cross-functional collaboration, integrity, and intellectual curiosity about AI technology.

Nice to have

• Experience with infrastructure agreements, including GPU capacity, cloud or neocloud agreements, colocation, SLAs, and acceptance terms.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on, high-impact role supporting the development of a scalable legal function.
• Full-time U.S. employees receive equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter, and dependent-care benefits.
• International employees receive benefits tailored to their region of residence.
• Collaborative work with product, engineering, security, finance, sales, and compliance teams.