Legal & Business Director

Beacon AI, Inc.

Job Overview

Location

San Carlos - Hybrid

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Own end-to-end contract lifecycle for NDAs, vendor agreements, consulting agreements, partnership/pilot agreements, MSAs/SOWs, and basic data/security addenda, including intake, drafting, review, negotiation support, signature, and filing.
• Maintain and update standardized contract templates and fallback positions aligned with company risk tolerance to streamline deal flow and reduce legal friction.
• Drive contract timelines by proactively nudging internal reviewers, resolving bottlenecks, and making clear decisions on escalation paths to ensure deals move forward without delay.
• Coordinate the review of government and defense contracts (including prime/sub agreements and flowdowns) with outside counsel, ensuring compliance with contractual obligations such as reporting requirements, security protocols, data handling rules, and publication restrictions.
• Translate complex legal contract terms into plain English for engineering, operations, and business teams to ensure clear understanding of commitments and deliverables.
• Maintain organized records for invention assignments, contractor IP paperwork, and confidentiality agreements, ensuring legal compliance and audit readiness.
• Partner with outside counsel on patent filings, trademark basics, and open-source software hygiene, including tracking usage, securing approvals, and ensuring proper attribution notices are implemented.
• Manage offer letters, contractor agreements, confidentiality/invention assignment forms, and separation documentation, coordinating closely with legal counsel and ensuring confidentiality is preserved.
• Own recurring business operations workflows including vendor onboarding, insurance renewals, corporate filings, document retention policies, signature authority matrix, and tooling administration related to legal and operational processes.
• Build and maintain simple, scalable systems: trackers, playbooks, checklists, and centralized repositories to serve as the single source of truth for legal and operational workflows.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for outside counsel, scoping work, managing budgets, reviewing first drafts, and translating legal advice into actionable business steps—not theoretical memos.
• Reduce founder overload by eliminating routine legal and operational churn through process automation, documentation, and clear delegation protocols.
• Achieve key first-90-day milestones: implement a non-email-based contract intake and approval process; establish core templates (NDA, consulting agreement, MSA/SOW, vendor agreement, pilot/POC agreement); deploy a simple obligations tracker for contract renewals and key deliverables; clarify escalation rules for outside counsel; enable founders to spend significantly less time on administrative legal/ops tasks.
• Prioritize effectively by distinguishing genuine legal risks from low-impact noise, ensuring focus is placed where it matters most to the business.
• Communicate tradeoffs, options, and recommendations clearly to executives and cross-functional teams in plain language without legal jargon.
• Work directly with engineering, operations, finance, and leadership teams to embed legal and operational discipline into company processes without introducing bureaucracy.
• Operate in a fast-paced, hybrid environment with 3+ days per week onsite in San Carlos, CA, while managing remote workflows and asynchronous communication.
• Uphold strict adherence to U.S. export control regulations by ensuring all legal and operational workflows comply with restrictions on foreign access to sensitive technologies.
• Maintain an organized, proactive, and solutions-oriented approach to ambiguous or evolving legal needs in a dual-use defense and commercial aviation technology company.

🎯 Requirements

• 5+ years supporting legal work in-house or at a firm, with experience managing contracts, corporate records, and deal coordination
• Juris Doctor (JD) and hands-on experience negotiating and managing commercial contracts, with strong operational instincts to build systems
• Ability to run processes end-to-end, exercise sound judgment, prioritize effectively, and close loops without letting tasks stall

🏖️ Benefits

• 100% of employee medical premiums covered; 25% coverage for dependents
• 3 weeks PTO plus 13+ paid company holidays
• Monthly phone and wellness stipends
• 401(k) plan offered (no current employer match, but future enhancements are committed)

Skills & Technologies

Remote

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Beacon AI, Inc.

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About Beacon AI, Inc.

Beacon AI develops AI-driven pilot assistance software for commercial and defense aviation. Its flagship system, the AI Copilot, integrates with existing flight decks to enhance safety, reduce crew workload, and improve fuel efficiency through real-time guidance and predictive analytics. The company serves airlines, cargo operators, and government agencies, leveraging machine learning trained on flight data and expert pilot knowledge. Founded by former naval aviators and autonomy engineers, Beacon AI is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and is backed by venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Costanoa Ventures.

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