Commercial Counsel — GE Vernova Legal Center of Efficiency

Job description

Job Description Summary GE Vernova is establishing a Legal Center of Efficiency, and this is the founding legal role responsible for helping design, build, and run it. Reporting to the Chief Corporate Counsel and working in close partnership with Legal Operations, the successful candidate will provide hands-on legal review and negotiation while standing up a scalable, technology-enabled model for handling high-volume, repeatable agreements – beginning with non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) – that reduces demand on senior legal resources, improves consistency, and speeds the business. The role follows a deliberate, phased path: it launches in 2026 with NDAs, chosen as the proving ground because they are high in volume, largely standardized, and comparatively low in risk, and it expands from 2027 to additional agreement types across the company. It combines day-to-day legal judgment with a builder’s mandate – setting standards, shaping process and technology, earning business adoption, and demonstrating measurable gains in efficiency, capacity, and risk reduction. Job Description Essential Responsibilities Legal Responsibilities - Draft, review, negotiate, and provide legal sign-off on NDAs — mutual and one-way, on GE Vernova and counterparty paper — including escalated and non-standard terms that require legal judgment. - Potential to expand Center of Efficiency’s work to a broad portfolio of commercial contracts , including customer and vendor agreements, master service agreements, and other scalable repeatable agreements, ensuring alignment with GE Vernova's legal standards and risk appetite. - Define and maintain risk positions, fallback language, and approval thresholds for standard and non-standard terms, so routine terms clear quickly while genuine risk is reserved for senior legal attention. - Serve as the designated legal reviewer and escalation point within the support model’s escalation framework, providing timely legal judgment on terms that exceed pre-approved thresholds. - Ensure practices align with GE Vernova’s legal standards, risk appetite, and applicable regulatory and data-protection requirements. - Advise the Chief Corporate Counsel and relevant GCs on legal risk trends emerging from volume and negotiation patterns, and recommend updates to positions, templates, and thresholds accordingly. Process/Operational Responsibilities (in partnership with Legal Operations) — Contribute legal subject-matter input to the design and documentation of the NDA intake, triage, and escalation process, in partnership with Legal Operations. - Contribute to the NDA playbook, RACI, standard templates, and training materials that Legal Operations maintains as part of the support model. - Support adoption across the business — business units, the General Counsel community, and functions such as procurement and commercial teams — by providing clear, business-friendly legal guidance that builds credibility and trust. - Support KPI reporting and governance cadence — including cycle time, escalation rate, rework rate, legal hours saved, and self-service adoption — in coordination with Legal Operations. - Support the controlled pilot and phased rollout of the NDA model , and contribute legal input to capacity planning and hiring recommendations as demand is validated. - Support enablement of self-service and appropriate technology or AI-enabled tools for routine NDAs , in coordination with Legal Operations’ technology enablement track. Ownership of process design, metrics infrastructure, and intake tooling sits jointly with Legal Operations per the platform’s operating model; this role provides legal subject-matter input and legal judgment within that framework, not sole ownership of the operational build-out. Fine-grained allocation of shared deliverables is governed by the platform RACI. Qualifications / Requirements - Education: Law degree (J.D. or equivalent) from an accredited institution; admission to the bar (or equivalent licensing authority) and in good standing required. - Experience: 8+ years of post-qualification legal experience in commercial contracting, with strong command of NDAs and other high-volume, repeatable agreements — senior enough to set standards and interface directly with GCs and executives. - Track record of building or transforming a legal process, function, or program — not just operating within one; experience standing something up from scratch is highly valued. - In-house or high-volume legal environment experience strongly preferred ; comfort operating in a fast-paced, evolving, build-stage environment. - Fluency with legal technology, CLM, and AI-enabled tools , and the judgment to deploy them where they create real leverage rather than for their own sake. - Proficiency in English required ; additional language skills a plus depending on region. - Change-management and stakeholder-influence skills to drive adoption of a new way of working across a large, global organization. Desired Characteristics - Builder: Energized by a blank page; you would rather design the system than inherit one. - Commercially minded: You connect legal work to business speed, cost, and competitive advantage. - Influential: You win buy-in without authority, across legal, business, and operations. - Strategic thinker: Able to connect day-to-day contracting work to broader business objectives and commercial strategy. - Pragmatic and business-friendly: Resolves issues efficiently, without unnecessary complexity, to keep the business moving. - Familiarity with GE Vernova's industry sectors (energy, power, electrification, wind) is a plus. Additional Information Relocation Assistance Provided: No