General Counsel

Job description

We're building the company which will de-risk the largest infrastructure build-out in history. When people finance GPU clusters, the datacenters housing them, and the infrastructure powering them, they need "offtake" - meaning someone has signed a contract to lease the cluster for a period of time before its even built. Financing a GPU cluster is inherently risky, since margins are thin and volumes are huge. Lenders don't want to take on the risk that cluster developers can't repay their loan, and cluster developers really don't want to risk not selling their cluster. As a result, risk is offloaded to the customer using fixed-price long-term contracts. If you don't mitigate this customer risk, there's a bubble. This isn't SaaS anymore - application layer companies sign multi-year contracts for computer and inference, but sell to customers on monthly subscriptions. If you mess up a purchase, it's game over: a minor shift in your revenue growth rate might mean the difference between profit or bankruptcy. But what if companies could exit their contract by selling it back to the market? Otherwise, as AI scales, compute only becomes available to folks who can effectively take on that risk. A 2-person startup in a San Francisco Victorian can't realistically sign a 5-year take or pay contract on $100m supercomputers. But they may be able to buy the month of liquidity that someone else sold back. So that's what we make: a liquid market for GPU offtake. ABOUT THE ROLE This is a role for a legal strategist–not a gatekeeper. We're building novel financial infrastructure in a market that doesn't have a rulebook yet. Our General Counsel must be a first-class business partner in the room where deals get shaped, not a checkpoint they pass through at the end. You'll be the team’s resource for strategic advice and tactical excellence. You need commercial instinct, real strategic judgment, and the maturity to know when to protect the company and when to lean in and get a deal done. We want a thought partner who negotiates contracts that close, balancing our interests with terms our counterparties can actually live with, not just papers that are maximally favorable to SFC. What you'll own: - Set the legal strategy and keep it tightly aligned with where the business is going, not where it's been. - Be a strategic thought partner to the founders and deal teams: pressure-test structures, flag the risks that actually matter, and help make the call when the path forward is genuinely ambiguous. - Draft, negotiate, and close a wide range of contracts, including offtake agreements, partnerships, vendor deals, and licensing agreements, with a commercial, deal-making mindset that gets to "yes" without giving away the store. - Navigate a regulatory frontier that's still being written: AI sales restrictions, AML/KYC, potential future CFTC oversight, GDPR, and financial and data-privacy laws across jurisdictions. - Advise on corporate governance, fundraising, and investor relations, including equity and debt financing transactions. - Partner with product to build compliance in from the start and turn legal constraints into design decisions rather than last-minute blockers. - Own risk and crisis response, including litigation, regulatory inquiries, and disputes, with calm, decisive judgment when the stakes are highest. - Lead our engagement with regulators and stay ahead of the emerging law shaping this space, so we're anticipating and preparing for new challenges and opportunities. - Protect what we build: patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. - Set the tone for legal and ethical integrity across the company through tailored policies, training, and best practices. - Run external counsel and the legal budget with discipline and leverage. BENEFITS GENEROUS EQUITY GRANT Team members are offered a competitive salary along with equity in the company VISA SPONSORSHIPS Yes, we sponsor visas and work permits RETIREMENT MATCHING We match 401(k) plans up to 4% MEDICAL, DENTAL & VISION We offer competitive medical, dental, vision insurance for employees and dependents and cover 100% of premiums TIME OFF We offer unlimited paid time off as well as 10+ observed holidays PARENTAL LEAVE We offer biological, adoptive, and foster parents paid time off to spend quality time with family DAILY LUNCH We cover lunch daily for employees UNLIMITED OFFICE BOOK BUDGET You can buy as many books for the office as you want The San Francisco Compute Company is committed to maintaining a workplace free from discrimination and harassment. We make employment decisions based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, belief, national origin, social or ethical origin, age, physical, mental, or sensory disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, HIV status, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status including pregnancy, or any other status protected by law. We welcome the opportunity to consider qualified applicants with prior arrest or conviction records. Our commitment to diversity includes hiring talented individuals regardless of their criminal history, in accordance with local, state, and federal laws, including San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance and California’s ban-the-box laws.