ABOUT BASETEN
Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $300M Series E, backed by investors including BOND, IVP, Spark Capital, Greylock, and Conviction. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products.
THE ROLE
Baseten is the AI inference infrastructure that serves the traffic and endpoints behind the most innovative AI-native and enterprise products in the market. We're hiring an Assistant General Counsel, Commercial to own our commercial deal surface as we scale from a high-growth startup into an enterprise-grade AI infrastructure platform. You'll be our primary commercial contracts attorney - embedded directly in the business and partnering day-to-day with Sales, Finance, and Engineering.
At Baseten, commercial and product are the same thing. What we build and sell is inference — compute, orchestration, deployment, and optimization delivered as the production backbone for our customers' products. Closing a deal here means understanding multi-tenancy, model deployment, latency and throughput SLAs, and how a customer's workload actually runs on our platform. This is a role for a commercially minded product lawyer who wants to sit at that intersection, not run a siloed contracts function.
You'll own enterprise commercial contracting end to end, and you'll also own several related strategic surfaces, including model marketplace initiatives and go-to-market partnerships. Your center of gravity is the commercial deal surface; like everyone on this team, you'll also flex onto cross-functional and one-off work where you're needed.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Own the full lifecycle of enterprise commercial agreements — MSAs, order forms, DPAs, BAAs, SOWs, and NDAs — at volume, as the primary legal partner to Sales and GTM throughout the deal cycle
- Serve as product counsel to the business: advise on how inference, multi-tenancy, model deployment, data flows, and SLAs map to contract terms, and translate technical architecture into risk positions Sales and customers can act on
- Own the commercial and legal terms for model marketplace and model distribution agreements, including the allocation of responsibility between Baseten and model providers
- Lead the legal workstream for go-to-market and strategic partnerships, structuring collaboration, reseller, and co-sell arrangements that protect Baseten's IP and independence while unlocking distribution
- Build, own, and continuously improve Baseten's commercial templates, playbooks, and standard positions against market feedback and leadership risk appetite
- Partner with Finance on revenue recognition and non-standard deal structures, and with Security and Compliance on data protection, regulated-data, and security commitments in customer contracts
- Drive deal velocity — know which terms to hold, which to trade, and how to explain the difference to an AE, a CFO or the CLO
- Advise the CLO on commercial and contractual risk, and proactively advocate for changes to Baseten's positions, playbooks, and risk posture as the product and market evolve
- May assist on M&A and other strategic or one-off transactions as needed
- Help build and mentor the commercial legal team as it scales, and contribute across whatever the team needs
REQUIREMENTS
- JD and active bar membership in good standing
- 8+ years of commercial / technology transactions experience, with meaningful in-house time at a B2B SaaS, cloud, or developer-infrastructure company
- Demonstrated product-counsel instinct: you've advised a technical product org, not just papered deals, and can hold your own in a conversation about how the product actually works
- Proven ability to negotiate sophisticated enterprise agreements at the redline level and manage high deal volume without losing the details
- Strong working knowledge of data privacy (GDPR, CCPA) and security provisions (DPAs, security addenda) as they surface in commercial contracts
- Clear, direct communicator who can translate legal and technical concepts for non-lawyers and push back constructively without creating deal friction
- Comfortable with significant autonomy in a lean, fast-moving legal function; knows when to own and when to escalate
- The ability to learn, build, and master AI tooling and systems to self-serve and operate at breakneck speed
- A desire to become a recognized thought leader in your field
NICE TO HAVE
- Experience at an AI, ML, or developer-infrastructure company, or with usage-based / consumption pricing models
- Familiarity with marketplace, model-distribution, or platform / ecosystem agreements
- Experience structuring strategic partnerships, OEM, or co-sell arrangements
- People-management or team-building experience through a high-growth phase
- Comfort with AI-assisted legal tooling and an interest in scaling a lean team through process and technology
BENEFITS
- Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity.
- 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents
- Flexible PTO policy including company wide Winter Break (our offices are closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day!)
- Paid parental leave
- Fertility and family-building stipend through Carrot
- Company-facilitated 401(k)
- Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities.
Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking team, we would love to hear from you.
At Baseten, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, where applicable).