About the Role

ABOUT US: AI needs a new infrastructure layer. We're building it at Modal. Every era of computing brought new workloads that previous infrastructure couldn't support: mainframes, databases, and the cloud. Each time, the company that rebuilt the layer underneath defined the decade. AI is no different, except it touches everything instead of one slice, and the window to build the layer underneath it is open right now. Our customers include category-defining companies like Ramp https://modal.com/blog/how-ramp-built-a-full-context-background-coding-agent-on-modal, Cognition, DoorDash, and Suno. They rely on Modal for instant GPU access, sub-second container starts, and native storage, so it's simple to serve low-latency inference, fine-tune models, and access production-ready sandboxes at scale. We recently raised a $355M Series C https://modal.com/blog/modal-series-c at a $4.65B valuation, led by General Catalyst and Redpoint Ventures. We've crossed $300M+ ARR and grown fivefold since September. Our team includes creators of popular open-source projects (e.g.,Seaborn https://github.com/mwaskom/seaborn,Luigi https://github.com/spotify/luigi), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience. THE ROLE: We're looking for a Senior Commercial Counsel to join us as the first commercial lawyer at Modal. This is a high-impact role for someone who wants to draft and negotiate a wide variety of commercial agreements and build the templates, playbooks, and positions that guide our operations. You'll report to our General Counsel and collaborate closely with the Sales, BizOps, Finance and Engineering teams and help build the foundation for a small but growing legal team. IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL: - Own customer contracting, including MSAs, service orders, NDAs, DPAs, and BAAs - negotiating directly with customers and partnering with the Sales team throughout the full deal cycle - Lead vendor-side contracting, including capex procurement, SaaS tools, and consulting arrangements, among others - Build and maintain contract repositories, template libraries and contract playbooks - Partner with Legal operations on CLM management, including approval workflows and escalation logic - Review and revise operational policies, including terms of service, privacy policy, acceptable use, and website terms, and customer-facing marketing materials REQUIREMENTS: - 8+ years of combined law firm and in-house experience negotiating commercial technology agreements, with meaningful time supporting an enterprise sales motion - JD and active membership in good standing in New York or California - Deep familiarity with SaaS contracting - Extensive experience working within Ironclad or a similar CLM - Ability to build templates and playbooks from scratch - Working knowledge of privacy and regulatory data protection frameworks, such as GDPR and HIPAA - Sound commercial judgment: you know how to balance risk with the business needs of a high-growth tech company BONUS: - Experience with infrastructure, compute, or datacenter supply agreements