Head of Legal Operations

From the company's job description

ABOUT BASETEN

Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $300M Series E https://www.baseten.co/blog/announcing-baseten-s-300m-series-e/, backed by investors including BOND, IVP, Spark Capital, Greylock, and Conviction. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products.

THE ROLE

Baseten's legal function is built to scale with the business without scaling headcount linearly — through playbooks, templates, automation, and AI-assisted workflows that let a small team move at the company's speed. We're hiring a Head of Legal Operations to own and build that engine.

This is a senior, hands-on operations role for someone who has run legal ops inside a high-growth technology company and knows how to turn a lean legal team into a force multiplier. You'll own the systems — CLM, intake and triage, knowledge management, reporting, outside counsel, and budget — and you'll push the frontier on legal tooling and AI, building on the agentic, Slack-driven intake and contract-automation infrastructure the function already runs. Your center of gravity is building and running the legal team's operating system.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the legal side of contract lifecycle management — intake, routing, templates, repository, and reporting — in close coordination with RevOps and Sales Ops, whose Order Form, CPQ, and contract-management systems the legal workflow flows from

• Partner with RevOps and Sales Ops as the legal lead on Order Form, CPQ, and contract-management decisions, stepping in to drive these cross-functional workstreams on the CLO's behalf

• Design and run the legal intake and triage workflow (today, a Slack-based, human-in-the-loop pipeline), continuously improving how requests are classified, drafted, reviewed, and closed

• Lead legal-technology and AI strategy with a bias toward building over buying: design and build AI-assisted and agentic workflows (e.g., Claude Cowork) before reaching for off-the-shelf tools, while bringing sharp vendor-selection judgment to the systems worth buying

• Build the data and reporting layer — cycle times, deal volume, risk snapshots, program health — that gives the CLO and leadership a clear line of sight

• Own knowledge management: keep playbooks, briefs, and templates current, versioned, and findable, and make them the source of truth for the team and the business

• Manage outside counsel operations and the legal budget — panel management, engagement, spend tracking, matter management — with an eye on scope and cost

• Build and run the operational cadences (intake SLAs, approval gates, cross-functional handoffs with Sales, Finance, and Security) that keep the function fast and accountable

• Partner with the CLO to design the operating model as the team grows toward IPO, and own program management of legal initiatives end to end

• May assist on M&A and other strategic or one-off transactions as needed — e.g., diligence, data-room, and integration operations

REQUIREMENTS

• 7+ years in legal operations at a high-growth technology company, including ownership of a legal-ops program (not just supporting one)

• Deep hands-on experience with CLM systems and legal tooling — selection, implementation, and day-to-day operation

• Track record of building process and workflow that measurably reduced cycle time or cost in a lean legal environment

• Fluency with data and reporting — you can build the dashboards and metrics leadership actually uses

• Strong cross-functional operator who can work across Legal, RevOps, Sales Ops, Finance, Security, and IT and drive adoption

• Clear, direct communicator who can translate operational design into something the team will actually use

• Fluency — or a clear path to fluency — in building and managing agentic AI workflows (e.g., Claude Cowork), with a bias toward building over buying and the judgment to know when to buy

• The ability to learn, build, and master AI tooling and systems to self-serve and operate at breakneck speed

• A desire to become a recognized thought leader in legal operations and to help define what a modern, AI-native legal-ops function looks like

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience at an AI, developer-infrastructure, or high-velocity SaaS company

• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted legal tools and an interest in agentic / automated legal workflows

• Outside-counsel management, legal spend / budget, or matter-management program ownership

• Experience standing up a legal-ops function from an early stage

• CLOC or comparable legal-ops community involvement

BENEFITS

• Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity.

• 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents

• Flexible PTO policy including company wide Winter Break (our offices are closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day!)

• Paid parental leave

• Fertility and family-building stipend through Carrot

• Company-facilitated 401(k)

• Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities.

Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking team, we would love to hear from you.

At Baseten, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, where applicable).