Join the World's Top Legal Talent Network

GitHub is seeking an experienced Principal Product Counsel to join its growing Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs (CELA) team and provide frontline end-to-end support to our product development and engineering teams. This role will support a range of GitHub’s offerings, involve counseling on a variety of subjects, and also offer the opportunity to serve as the primary attorney on strategic projects involving cutting-edge technology and complex transactions. 

GitHub CELA is an innovative team of professionals, located across the U.S. and around the  world, who collaborate remotely, working closely together and across the business. The CELA team operates on the cutting edge of legal practice, developer policy, and social impact. Like the rest of the software world, we use GitHub itself to work more collaboratively, transparently, and efficiently. We believe strongly in working from first principles, practicing kindness and helping make each other and the team better, and being careful stewards of the unique GitHub culture we are developing together. We value diversity of thought and experience, excellence and rigor in our work, growth mindset and continuous improvement, cultivating a deep understanding of our products and services, intellectual curiosity, a passion for technology, and innovation in our practice. We require strong bias for driving results, and a commitment to prioritizing developer and customer trust in our platform. 

Responsibilities: 

• Serve as primary legal advisor to various product development teams, supporting them by providing practical, action-oriented legal guidance on new products, services, and  programs, from inception to launch and beyond 
• Provide and manage legal advice across a range of legal, policy, business and strategic issues related to GitHub’s products and services, including intellectual property rights, privacy and data security, novel issues regarding artificial intelligence and machine learning, and consumer protection
• Help GitHub’s business leaders anticipate and adapt to evolving legal, regulatory, and industry trends 
• Collaborate with CELA, other GitHub teams, and, where appropriate, outside counsel and Microsoft stakeholders on all of the above, driving consensus with them when needed 

Required qualifications: 

• J.D. or equivalent and a license to practice law in the United States 
• 7+ years of practicing legal experience, including at a law firm and/or in-house experience
• Experience with product counseling involving software, cloud services, intellectual property law, privacy and data security 
• Demonstrated success in issue spotting, problem solving, and the ability to be agile through periods of rapid change, and cross-team collaboration while driving issues to closure 

Preferred qualifications: 

• Familiarity with using GitHub.com 
• Commitment to provide high quality client service and a strong desire to build trusted  advisor relationships with key clients and executives 
• Joy and passion for legal drafting that is clear, concise, and human readable, including an ability to simply describe complex legal and technical scenarios 
• Desire and ability to perform as part of a diverse and inclusive team, and to foster a spirit of diversity, inclusion, and belonging across CELA 

Minimum salary of $89,200 to maximum $236,600.

In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee's role.

These pay ranges are intended to cover roles based across the United States. An individual's base pay depends on various factors including geographical location and review of experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant. At GitHub certain roles are eligible for benefits and additional rewards, including annual bonus and stock. These rewards are allocated based on individual impact in role.

Location: In this role, you can work remotely from anywhere in the United States.