Director and Assistant General Counsel- Product Legal

About the Team 

The mission of the legal department at Databricks is to help scale the business overall while ensuring governance and compliance, contributing to customer and corporate security, and corporate risk management and mitigation. 

Outcomes

Databricks is seeking a Director and Assistant General Counsel, Product Legal to lead a team of lawyers providing cutting-edge advice to Databricks’ engineering and product management as we navigate rapidly evolving global laws and regulations in AI, data privacy, and data protection. 

This person will report to the Assistant General Counsel, Product, Privacy, and IP, and work with the engineering and product management organizations at Databricks to lead efforts to build trustworthy technology at Databricks. This is an opportunity to be an integral member of a global, collaborative, 50+ legal team. The product legal team consists of four members in addition to the AGC. 

Responsibilities

• Manage a skilled team of proactive product lawyers.
• Exercise keen business and legal judgment. You know when to say “yes,” “no, unless …”, and “no”, but you also know when to escalate concerns. 
• Demonstrate leadership in developing and enhancing scalable product counseling processes. This will require partnering with the Product and Privacy team’s program managers and the Legal Ops team as appropriate.
• Partner with teams across Databricks and close external partners that are building, deploying, and operating technology for external and internal users. 
• Demonstrate expertise in product counseling, privacy and security laws, marketing, and technology transactions as well as the capacity to be a generalist and learn new areas of law and legal skills quickly. 
• Provide cutting-edge legal advice to Databricks’ engineering and product management as they navigate rapidly evolving global laws and regulations in big data, including data privacy, data protection, and AI. 
• Work cross-functionally with the commercialization, product marketing, marketing, and communications teams to bring our transformative offerings to market. 
• Serve as a subject matter expert in collaboration with the commercial legal team as they negotiate complex contracts with our customers, including data processing addendums and business associate agreements. 
• Collaborate with other legal leaders in go-to-market, compliance, corporate, and public affairs with respect to product issues.
• Develop relationships with your counterparts at our strategic partners.
• Deeply understand product and data risk issues to be able to hear and answer questions that aren’t asked and translate technical and security concerns into answers understandable to non-technical lawyers. 
• Develop end-to-end product counseling processes - from ideation to end of life.
• Provide general legal support on a flexible, as-needed basis with respect to other areas of the business. 
• Work with potential vendors to understand data flows to determine privacy and data protection risk and negotiate modifications.

Qualifications & Experience

• Minimum 10+ years relevant legal experience at a top law firm and/or in-house (a combination of both is a plus), with a minimum of 4 years focused experience in product, privacy, and/or IP law. Ideally, you have some experience with intermediary liability and accessibility issues. 
• An understanding of open-source licensing.
• At least two years of experience leading a high-performing team. Bonus points if you’ve scaled a team at a high-growth company.
• Deep understanding of cloud and software technology and a strong desire to work on legal issues in these areas. 
• Strong understanding of go-to-market motions.
• Technical background -- either an engineering or hard science academic background, work experience, or demonstrated life experience diving deep into technology. 
• Ability to prioritize and manage time, and client expectations, in the face of competing demands, often without direct guidance, as we scale our rapidly expanding business. 
• Demonstrated experience creating processes to help a business scale.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills 
• Collaboration across functions is creative and value-adding rather than checkbox based and bureaucratic. 
• Humility. “I don’t know” is sometimes the right answer (until you know). 
• You avoid jargon where possible. We avoid passing on unnecessary complexity to our stakeholders, including other lawyers.
• Have state bar membership in either California or Washington

Benefits (US)

• Comprehensive health coverage, including medical, dental, and vision

• 401(k) Plan

• Equity awards

• Flexible time off

• Paid parental leave

• Family Planning

• Gym reimbursement

• Annual personal development fund

• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)