Senior Counsel, Commercial (Health and Life Sciences)
OpenAI
Summary
We are seeking an experienced attorney to join our commercial legal team. Based in the US, you will help lead commercial legal support for OpenAI's rapidly growing business, working with teams such as GTM, Partnerships, Procurement, Finance, Product, Infrastructure, and Engineering. This is a great opportunity to join OpenAI's commercial legal team, negotiating high-impact agreements and helping to build scalable frameworks for responsible growth.
Job description
About the Role
We are seeking an experienced attorney to join our commercial legal team. Based in the US, you will help lead commercial legal support for OpenAI's rapidly growing business, working with teams such as GTM, Partnerships, Procurement, Finance, Product, Infrastructure, and Engineering. This is a great opportunity to join OpenAI's commercial legal team, negotiating high-impact agreements and helping to build scalable frameworks for responsible growth.
In this role, you will:
- Serve as the legal partner for OpenAI's business transactions, partnerships, and operations, with a focus on life sciences.
- Provide practical, business-oriented legal advice to teams including Go-to-Market, Partnerships, and Research.
- Draft, structure, and negotiate complex commercial agreements with enterprise customers, vendors, and strategic partners, including transactions involving life sciences.
- Identify and coordinate issues involving intellectual property, privacy, security, regulatory requirements, and product use with the appropriate specialist teams.
- Lead negotiations and manage multiple stakeholders, escalating consequential issues with clear options and recommendations.
- Develop and improve templates, playbooks, processes, and training that make routine contracting more efficient and consistent.
- Monitor and advise on regulatory and compliance matters affecting AI and technology in life sciences.
- Collaborate with colleagues across OpenAI's global legal team to ensure alignment across jurisdictions.
You might thrive in this role if you:
- Have 10+ years of relevant legal experience, including substantial responsibility for drafting and negotiating complex commercial agreements.
- Have experience with life sciences transactions.
- Are familiar with HIPAA and transactions involving health data.
- Can translate legal and commercial complexity into clear, actionable advice for business stakeholders and senior leaders.
- Exercise sound judgment, take ownership, and move matters forward when facts are incomplete or circumstances change.
- Build trust across functions and can communicate a principled position while working constructively toward a solution.
- Enjoy improving processes and creating practical tools that help a growing team scale.
- Are curious about technology and motivated to learn about AI and its commercial implications.
Requirements
- 10+ years of relevant legal experience
- Substantial responsibility for drafting and negotiating complex commercial agreements
- Experience with life sciences transactions
- Familiarity with HIPAA and transactions involving health data
- Ability to translate legal and commercial complexity into clear, actionable advice
- Sound judgment and ownership
- Trust-building across functions
- Process improvement mindset
- Curiosity about technology and AI
Benefits
- Medical, Dental & Vision
- Health Savings Accounts
- Health FSA
- Dependent Care FSA
- Commuter Expenses
- 401(k) Retirement Plan
- Paid Parental Leave
- Paid Medical Leave
- Paid Caregiver Leave
- Flexible PTO
- Paid Company Holidays
- Paid Sick Time
- Mental Health Support
- Life Insurance
- Disability Coverage
- Learning & Development Stipend
- Daily Meals
- Relocation Support
- Charitable Donation Matching
- Wellness Stipends
- Equity
Company overview
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory and company based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Wojciech Zaremba, and John Schulman, OpenAI initially operated as a non-profit research organization before transitioning to a capped-profit model. The company's mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. OpenAI has developed groundbreaking AI technologies including GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) models, DALL-E for image generation, and Codex for programming assistance. Their most notable product, ChatGPT, has revolutionized human-AI interaction and brought large language models to mainstream audiences. OpenAI conducts cutting-edge research in machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and reinforcement learning, while also developing practical AI applications that are transforming industries worldwide.