Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Senior Counsel, Employment role sits at the intersection of SaaS scale and AI-enabled product development, where workforce decisions increasingly touch automation, data use, and new operating models. In a sector where product velocity and global hiring can outpace traditional policy cycles, employment legal work becomes a core part of risk management and execution, not a back-office function. The remit’s explicit connection to AI enablement signals a modern legal seat at the table alongside People and product stakeholders.
For SaaS legal careers, the durable value here is learning how employment frameworks adapt when tools, workflows, and roles are being reshaped by automation. Experience advising on privacy-adjacent employment questions, designing repeatable legal processes, and coordinating with outside counsel translates well across SaaS companies that are formalising governance while continuing to build. The emphasis on scaling legal support also develops operational legal skills that matter in high-growth environments.
This role best fits a senior employment lawyer who prefers cross-functional partnership and can convert ambiguous questions into practical guidance. It will suit someone comfortable balancing day-to-day counseling with longer-horizon process design, and who is motivated by the emerging legal patterns created when AI capabilities move from experimentation into standard business use.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the Team
OpenAI’s Legal team plays a crucial role in furthering our mission by tackling innovative and fundamental legal issues in AI. The team includes professionals with expertise spanning technology, privacy, IP, corporate, employment, tax law, regulatory, and litigation. If you’re passionate about meaningful and unique work as a technology lawyer, this team is for you.
About the Role
We’re looking for an employment lawyer to support a growing volume of complex employment work as the company scales and the pace of employment related issues increases.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. Remote may be considered.
In this role, you will:
Provide advice and counsel to people and product teams on AI enablement and automation.
Support on a broad range of employment legal matters.
Work cross functionally with the People Team.
Support on strategic initiatives related to facilitating legal training and managing outside counsel on employment litigation matters and administrative charges.
Lead on and develop processes for scaling legal support for employment legal matters.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have 8+ years of combined legal experience at fast-paced technology companies and technology-focused law firms with a focus on employment law.
Have a JD and license or qualification to practice in CA.
Strong expertise in AI-related employment laws. Comfort with employee privacy laws is a plus.
Deep interest in, and experience with, advising product and people teams on AI enablement and automation.
Expertise on federal and state labor and employment laws and regulations.
Have experience managing complex employment litigation matters.
Have a strong sense of ownership, are inquisitive and enthusiastic about technology, enjoy being continually challenged, and can demonstrate sound judgment in fast moving, ambiguous situations.
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.
We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.
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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.
