Chainguard
Lead Counsel
Job Summary
This role involves partnering with Product, Engineering, Security, and Marketing teams to provide legal guidance on compliance, licensing, privacy, and AI-related risks. The candidate should have experience in in-house legal counsel, particularly with open source, privacy, and regulatory matters, and be able to translate complex legal concepts into actionable advice. The position emphasizes risk management, regulatory mastery, and fostering a collaborative team environment. It requires a U.S. bar membership and offers a remote, flexible work culture with a focus on impactful legal work in the software and open-source space.
Required Skills
Benefits
Job Description
What You’ll Do (aka Your Legal Playground)
- Be the Embedded Legal Sidekick: Go deep with Product, Engineering, Security, and Marketing teams and become their go-to for crisp, business-friendly advice. If you can translate legalese into actionable game plans (without boring anyone to tears), you’ll fit right in.
- Open Source & Licensing Guru: Advise on every “Is this license going to bite us later?" question. You’ll help us play smart with open-source while keeping legal and security landmines at bay.
- Put Privacy First (and Second and Third): Take the wheel on all things privacy and data protection—building globally savvy policies, keeping our Privacy Program sharp, and spotting privacy risks in shiny new product features before regulators can even find their binoculars.
- Incident Response, But Make it Calm: When things go sideways, grab the flashlight and lead the way—investigating, advising, communicating, and helping Chainguard learn ~fast~ so we end up even better.
- Connect the Dots: Orchestrate audits, certifications, compliance projects, and more—all while making Legal the enabler (not the gatekeeper) across GRC, Procurement, Sales, Security, and beyond.
- Crush Contract & AI Conundrums: Be the subject matter go-to for privacy and AI terms for every deal that matters (with customers, vendors, and wildcards in between). You’ll be the person who makes complicated risks sound crystal-clear and manageable, even if everyone else isn’t sure what “AI hallucinations” are (yet).
The Legal Marvel We’re Looking For
- Product & Privacy Wizardry: You’ve owned in-house product/privacy counsel work (bonus points for SaaS or security backgrounds) and have the battle scars to show for it.
- Open Source Sensei: At least 5 years guiding open source questions, with the uncanny ability to make even the knottiest licensing requirement make sense (or at least actionable).
- Regulations? Bring ’Em On: You master privacy, data protection, and AI compliance across the product lifecycle—and you’re never outpaced (or out-geeked) by regulatory change.
- Risk Tamer: Complicated business conundrum? You make risk clear, build trust, and stay pragmatic—even when the popcorn’s burning.
- Self-Starter Vibes: Thrive in chaos, ambiguity, and shifting priorities? You’ll love how fast—and far—you can run here.
- Team Over Ego: Listen first, communicate clearly, and always help raise the bar (no pun intended).
- Legal Credentials: In good standing with a U.S. state bar.
Why Roll With Chainguard?
- You’ll join a high-trust, no-nonsense, low-ego team that sees Legal as a competitive advantage, not a cost center.
- Dive into complex, thorny, and ultra-rewarding legal puzzles that shape the very future of software (seriously).
- Work flexibly, from wherever you work best. We trust you to get it done—and support you along the way.
- We celebrate smart risk-taking, actual work-life balance, and a healthy disregard for unnecessary meetings.
- Above all: We love what we do and believe in having fun while doing things that matter.
Ready to do Legal differently? Apply—let’s build (and protect) something that lasts.
About Us
Chainguard is the secure foundation for software development and deployment. By providing guarded open source software, built from source and updated continuously, Chainguard helps organizations eliminate threats in their software supply chains.
Founded by the industry's leading experts on open source software, security and cloud native development, Chainguard has built the largest library of open source software that is secure by default.
Chainguard’s mission is to be the safe source for open source.
We live and breathe our company values:
We are customer obsessed - We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.
We have a bias for intentional action - We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.
We don’t take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) - We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.
We trust each other and assume good intentions - We’re transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.
A few of the benefits we offer:
- Flexible & Remote-First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi-annual destination summits, and a $400 monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.
- Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
- 100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.
- ∞ Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need – to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.
- 18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child's first year.
- For a full list of our benefits and rewards, click here.
If your experience is close but doesn’t fulfill all requirements, please apply. We’re building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring “Chainguardians'' with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.
Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Chainguard will process your personal data in accordance with Chainguard’s Privacy Policy.
©2025 Chainguard. All Rights Reserved.
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