General Counsel

Summary

Join UpGuard's Legal team as their General Counsel (GC), leading the in-house legal function and supporting the company's growth. Reporting to the COO, you will provide global leadership, build relationships, and lead a high-performing legal team. Responsibilities include acting as a strategic legal advisor, building and scaling the legal team using AI and automation, leading the B2B SaaS contracting team, providing product counseling, developing a compliance program, managing corporate legal activities, and directing intellectual property strategy. The ideal candidate will have 10+ years of legal experience, including 4+ years in a leadership role, a law degree, and exceptional ability to integrate legal, technical, and business perspectives. This role offers a unique opportunity to lead the legal function of a rapidly scaling cybersecurity company.

Requirements

• 10+ years of legal experience, with a strong in-house background at an international, B2B SaaS company
• 4+ years of experience in a leadership role, managing and building legal teams
• Law degree and admission to and in good standing with the local governing body
• Exceptional ability to integrate legal, technical, and business perspectives, with proven experience translating complex legal issues into practical, actionable guidance aligned with business and technology objectives
• Deep understanding with sell-side SaaS contracting and experience navigating complicated deals across various deal sizes and buyer types
• Strong interpersonal and cross-functional collaboration skills, with experience providing responsive, business-oriented legal support across global teams, time zones, cultures, and distributed (hybrid/remote) environments
• Significant breadth of knowledge and experience in as many of the following areas as possible: commercial contracts, corporate governance, data security and privacy, AI governance, employment and human resources, intellectual property, marketing (B2B), product, intellectual property, regulatory and trade compliance
• Experience implementing AI tools and workflow automation to enhance legal operations, drive efficiency, and scale support for business needs

Responsibilities

• Act as a strategic legal advisor to executive leadership, proactively identifying risks and opportunities to support informed, high-impact decisions
• Build and scale a technology-enabled legal team, leveraging AI and automation to drive efficiency, optimize workflows, and provide responsive support
• Lead a high-performing B2B SaaS contracting team, implementing scalable processes and metrics-driven practices to accelerate deals and reduce risk
• Provide strategic product counseling to product, engineering, and go-to-market teams, addressing legal issues and enabling successful, compliant product launches
• Develop and oversee a scalable compliance program, covering data privacy (e.g., GDPR, CCPA), OFAC/trade compliance, anti-bribery, AI governance, and ethics
• Manage corporate legal activities, including governance, equity administration, employment matters, M&A, and fundraising
• Direct intellectual property strategy, proactively protecting and managing trademarks, copyrights, patents, and trade secrets

Benefits

• Monthly Lifestyle subsidy: use this for financial, physical and mental wellbeing (all regions)
• WFH set-up allowance: to ensure you have the right environment to work in, we will help you get set-up within your first 3 months at UpGuard (all regions)
• $1500 USD annual Learning & Development allowance: to support your career development all team members will be able to expense development opportunities against this allowance (all regions)
• Generous Annual Leave/PTO allowances: time to recharge your batteries (all regions)
• 18 weeks paid Parental Leave: irrespective of parenting role (all regions)
• Personal Leave allowance: this includes sick & carer’s leave (all regions)
• Fully remote working environment: whilst we have physical offices in Sydney & Hobart, we do not mandate compulsory attendance (all regions)
• Top spec hardware: all team members will be provided with top-spec laptops for their role (all regions)
• Generative AI & Automation tooling: UpGuard provides industry leading generative AI and automation tools to support all team members with their work (all regions)