General Counsel (Legal Counsel) at Protege

About the Role

We're hiring our second attorney: a hands-on counsel who will work directly with the CLO and own a large share of Protege's day-to-day legal work. This is not a narrow specialist seat. On any given week, you'll move between:

• Data licensing agreements with a hospital system, de-identification questions under HIPAA, an NDA for a frontier lab, a vendor Business Associate Agreement (BAA), and a cross-border transfer analysis — often several of these in the same day.

You'll primarily focus on two areas:

• Commercial contracts. Drafting, redlining, and negotiating data license agreements, Statements of Work (SOWs), NDAs, BAAs, Data Processing Agreements (DPAs), and vendor agreements with counterparties ranging from health systems, data aggregators to the largest AI builders.

• Data & Privacy. HIPAA, CCPA, GDPR, and de-identification strategy, business associate posture, privacy policies, cross-border data transfers, and emerging AI regulation. Privacy at Protege is core to the product.

You'll be the primary legal resource for business, partnerships, and engineering teams. Legal work is managed through Slack, Notion, and Google Drive, with AI tools integrated into triage and drafting. Requests are fast-paced, priorities shift, and you'll help build the structure.

What You’ll Do:

• Draft, negotiate, and close commercial agreements across data supply and demand sides, including data licensing, SOWs, NDAs, BAAs, DPAs, and novel arrangements.

• Counsel teams on data privacy: HIPAA, de-identification, consent, provenance, GDPR/CCPA, and AI-specific regulations.

• Triage and manage a high-volume legal queue, deciding what needs immediate attention, fast answers, or outside counsel.

• Work directly with technical teams and counterparties, translating legal risk into clear, practical communication.

• Manage outside counsel on specialist matters, ensuring tight scoping and cost efficiency.

• Build legal infrastructure, including templates, playbooks, intake systems, and AI-assisted workflows to speed up legal processes.

What Success Looks Like

30 Days: Learn and Build Relationships

• Partner with teams (partnerships, BD, healthcare, product, engineering) and outside counsel to understand intake, escalation paths, and bottlenecks.

• Get fluent in Protege’s workflows: Slack intake, Notion legal tracker, template library, and AI tools for triage and drafting.

• Handle initial NDAs, SOW redlines, and privacy questions end-to-end with CLO review.

60 Days: Develop and Cultivate

• Co-own the commercial queue: NDAs, SOWs, DPAs, and BAAs move through you efficiently.

• Conduct first data license negotiations end-to-end.

• Take ownership of a standing privacy workstream (e.g., de-identification, cross-border transfers, privacy policy maintenance).

90 Days: Make an Impact

• Co-own commercial and privacy queues with CLO engaged on strategy and novel structures.

• Ship at least three improvements to legal infrastructure, such as templates, playbooks, or AI-assisted workflows.

• Be the trusted first call for the business, providing practical answers quickly.

What You Bring

We prioritize accomplishments over years of experience:

• Negotiated and closed complex technology or data transactions, ideally including data licensing and technical counterparties.

• Owned real pieces of a privacy program, understanding HIPAA, de-identification, GDPR/CCPA, DPAs, and BAAs, and staying updated on emerging regulations.

• Managed a high-volume legal queue with personal accountability for turnaround times.

• Thrived in ambiguity, proactively finding information to make informed decisions.

• Operated in fast-moving, high-growth environments, building templates, playbooks, and workflows.

• Tech-native, comfortable with Slack, Notion, Google Drive, and AI systems for daily work.

• High EQ, providing practical, calm, solution-focused advice in high-pressure situations.

• JD and active bar membership in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.

Minimum Qualifications

• 6+ years of relevant legal experience with significant depth in technology transactions and privacy (healthcare/HIPAA/GDPR/CCPA experience strongly preferred).

• Speed and throughput in document handling and juggling multiple matters.

• Comfort with ambiguity and self-direction in decision-making.

• Fluency with modern tools like Slack, Notion, Google Drive, and AI systems.

• High EQ for counseling under deadline pressure and negotiating across cultures.

• JD and active bar membership in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.

Preferred Qualifications

• In-house experience at a technology company shipping products with novel legal risk, ideally involving AI, training data, or health data.

• Experience negotiating data licensing agreements or other data-centric commercial deals.

• Familiarity with de-identification standards (Expert Determination, Safe Harbor) and healthcare data ecosystem.

• Experience as an early or solo in-house lawyer building intake, templates, and outside counsel relationships.