Senior Commercial Attorney (AI)

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

Salary: $200,000–$290,000 annually, plus equity. USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions.

Company

Perplexity develops AI products including enterprise, computer, and API offerings for deployment in enterprise environments.

What you will do

• Lead end-to-end drafting, review, and negotiation of enterprise customer agreements, including MSAs, order forms, SaaS and API terms, DPAs, BAAs, security exhibits, customer-paper redlines, product addenda, GSA MAS orders, and federal RFP responses.
• Advise Enterprise Sales, Partnerships, Deal Desk, Customer Success, Security, Privacy, Product, Engineering, Finance, Compliance, and executive stakeholders on live deals and legal risk.
• Maintain and extend negotiation playbooks, DPA and Privacy Notice architecture, product-specific term libraries, fallback positions, templates, precedent repositories, and self-serve tools.
• Advise on AI-specific contract terms, including data postures, output ownership, liability, agentic-feature risk allocation, model routing, enterprise integrations, and product commitments.
• Monitor GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, HIPAA, DORA, the EU AI Act, sector-specific frameworks, and public-sector procurement requirements, translating them into practical contract positions.
• Represent Perplexity Legal in negotiations with sophisticated enterprise counterparties and support fast, practical deal execution.

Requirements

• JD and good standing with an active U.S. state bar membership.
• At least 7+ years of combined law firm and in-house experience, including a substantial in-house component.
• Demonstrated ability to independently own complex enterprise SaaS or API deals from the vendor side, including work with regulated-industry customers in financial services, healthcare, or government.
• Experience advising on commercial terms and pricing structures for high-growth SaaS/API businesses, including usage-based and tiered pricing, pilots, and expansion frameworks.
• Familiarity with GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, DORA, and the EU AI Act, plus hands-on experience negotiating DPAs.
• Strong business acumen and ability to partner with Sales, Deal Desk, Product, Security, and executive stakeholders on live deals under time pressure.
• Ability to triage and progress multiple concurrent deals while maintaining diligence, risk assessment, and high-quality documentation.
• Ability to build and extend durable legal infrastructure such as playbooks, templates, precedent repositories, or self-serve tools.
• Ability to communicate clearly with business and technical audiences and translate legal concepts into usable guidance for non-lawyers.
• Hands-on, proactive, low-ego approach; sound judgment about when to escalate and when to close; comfort with ambiguity, fast pace, and cross-functional work; high integrity and intellectual curiosity about AI technology.

Nice to have

• Prior experience with public-sector contracting or on-premise deployment structures.
• Experience with AI-native contracting questions related to agentic products.
• Experience contracting with regulated entities, especially financial institutions or healthcare organizations in the EU or UK.

Culture & Benefits

• Independent, business-practical, diligent approach to legal work.
• Focus on enabling the business, framing risk practically, and creating scalable solutions.
• U.S. full-time employees receive equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter, and dependent-care benefits.
• Full-time employees outside the U.S. receive benefits tailored to their region of residence.
• Work is performed in a hybrid arrangement in San Francisco or New York City.