Founding Legal Counsel

About Build AI

Build AI is the data hyperscaler for Physical AI. We're vertically integrated across hardware, manufacturing, logistics, collection, and model training to scale the physical labor dataset orders of magnitude faster than anyone in the world.

Job Summary

We're hiring a Founding Legal Counsel to own the legal architecture behind Build's global operations. The role reports to the Chief Operating Officer and is Build's first in-house legal hire.

Build designs and manufactures its own hardware, collects data inside working factories and job sites across a growing number of countries, and pays a distributed network of partners and individual collectors at volume. Every new country brings the same stack of questions at once: how fast we can operate before we need an entity, what consent has to look like for the people we record, whether the data can leave the country and on what paper, how collectors and partners are structured, and how they get paid without the banks shutting us down. Today those questions are answered country by country, by outside counsel across several firms, with no one inside the company owning the design.

You will own that design. You will build the consent, data-transfer, entity, and contracting architecture that has to work in twenty countries rather than be rebuilt in each one, run the outside counsel network instead of being routed by it, and paper the commercial agreements on both sides of the business — the partners who collect the data and the customers who license it.

Securities and financing, export controls, national security, tax, and jurisdiction-specific regulatory matters will continue to sit with outside specialist counsel. You will own those relationships and translate that advice into action rather than being the specialist yourself.

You will be hands-on from day one, you will do most of the work yourself before you hire anyone — leveraging AI seamlessly and exhaustively — and you will build the legal infrastructure while the company grows from a founding team to thousands across multiple continents.

Your job is to help Build move quickly without taking risks we don't understand.

Key Responsibilities

Own the legal path into new countries, including entities, EORs, contractors, partners, payments, and local regulatory requirements

Build and own the global consent, privacy, data-transfer, retention, and data-provenance framework

Draft and negotiate customer, partner, vendor, manufacturing, employment, consulting, and other commercial agreements

Own international entity governance, maintenance, statutory obligations, intercompany arrangements, and compliance calendars

Identify and manage regulatory risk across privacy, AI/data, foreign investment, payments, foreign ownership, and international operations

Run diligence on Build's data rights and provenance for customers, regulators, investors, and acquirers

Select and manage outside counsel globally, including scope, fees, quality, and translating specialist advice into action

Partner with Operations, Data Scaling, Finance, Engineering, and Manufacturing to structure new markets, products, and operating models

Make risk legible and give clear recommendations that help the business move quickly without taking risks it doesn't understand

You may be a good fit if you have (Must-have qualifications)

JD and active bar admission in at least one US jurisdiction, with 6+ years of relevant experience including significant in-house time at a startup or rapidly growing technology company

Owned legal work for a company operating across multiple countries — you have stood up operations in markets you had not worked in before, and dealt with what went wrong after launch

Deep, practical data privacy experience: consent architecture, cross-border transfer, and the ability to work with a regime you have not read before and reach an answer that holds

Strong commercial contracting experience — you have personally drafted and negotiated complex agreements on both the customer and partner/vendor side

Have selected and managed outside counsel across multiple jurisdictions, including pushing back on scope and fees

Comfortable being the entire department before you are the head of one, and comfortable giving a clear recommendation under time pressure with incomplete information

Willing to be in San Francisco in person, and to get on a plane to Shenzhen, India, or any market we are opening when the answer is on the ground

Strong candidates may also have experience with (Nice-to-have qualifications)

Legal operations in China, India, Southeast Asia, LATAM, or Africa

AI, data licensing, or another business where the product is data and provenance is the asset

Contractor and worker classification at scale across multiple jurisdictions

Marketplace, gig, or distributed-workforce platforms operating across countries

Biometric, video, or other sensitive-data privacy regimes

Hardware, robotics, or a business that moves its own devices across borders — customs, import/export, and device compliance

Corporate governance for a venture-backed US company with foreign subsidiaries, including entity maintenance and investor or M&A diligence

Working alongside export controls, trade, national security, securities, and financing counsel without needing to be the specialist

Benefits

Competitive pay

Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage

$500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits

Housing subsidy of $2k per month for those living within walking distance of the office

Relocation support for those moving to San Francisco (Financial District) or Shenzhen (Nanshan)

Various wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more

Daily lunch and dinner in our office

Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

Unlimited Codex and Claude credits

Travel

How we're different

Build believes in the Bitter Lesson . By taking a general approach of learning from humans, our addressable market is all physical labor.

We are a fully in-person team in San Francisco (Financial District) and Shenzhen (Nanshan), and greatly value engineering skills. We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both and work across disciplines as needed.

Build AI is an equal opportunity employer. We review every application. If you do not meet every bullet, still apply. Questions: [email protected]