General Counsel at Firecrawl in San Francisco, CA

Job description

• Application
• General Counsel
• You'll run legal at Firecrawl, all of it. Strategy, risk posture, policy, the team, and the outside firms. Every question about what we can crawl, license, build, sign, and ship comes to you first, and the founders will treat your read as the read.
• Firecrawl sits on some of the least settled legal ground in technology. The rules for web data access, AI training data, copyright, and who owns machine-generated output are being written right now: in courtrooms, in regulators' offices, and in the deals companies like ours sign every week. Our General Counsel doesn't wait for that to settle. You'll set Firecrawl's positions, defend them to customers, counterparties, and regulators, and, where it counts, help shape where the law lands.
• You'll report to our CEO, lead and finish building the legal team (commercial and product counsel, a technical compliance program lead shared with our CTO, and legal operations), own outside counsel and the legal budget, and sit next to the founders on financings, board matters, and every decision with a legal edge, which at Firecrawl is most of them.
• Salary Range: $310,000–$392,000 USD/year
• Equity Range: Competitive equity. Details shared during the process.
• Location: San Francisco, CA (SF HQ). On-site, five days a week.
• Job Type: Full-Time
• Experience: 12+ years of legal experience, including time running or helping run legal in-house at a venture-backed technology company
• Work Authorization: Must be authorized to work in the United States. We're not able to sponsor US visas right now, though that may change down the line.

Responsibilities

• Set Firecrawl's legal strategy and risk posture, starting with the questions that define the company: what we crawl and how, how we treat robots.txt and publisher opt-outs, what data provenance we stand behind, and where the lines are on AI training data, agents acting on the web for users, and machine-generated output
• Own the company's position on web data access and be ready to defend it anywhere: in customer diligence, across a negotiating table, in front of a regulator, or in court if it comes to that. Run disputes, demand letters, and pre-litigation strategy yourself, bringing in outside counsel when the matter warrants it
• Run corporate and board legal: financings, governance, the cap table and equity plans, board materials and minutes, and the corporate hygiene that holds up under diligence. You'll act as corporate secretary
• Set the commercial legal posture from the top: risk allocation, indemnity and data-provenance positions, fallback ladders, and approval thresholds. Your counsel run the deals. You decide what they can give
• Lead privacy, security, and compliance strategy alongside our CTO: GDPR, CCPA, the EU AI Act and the state AI laws behind it, SOC 2 and the enterprise diligence machine, sanctions and export questions, and whether laws written for data brokers reach a company like ours
• Steward our open source posture: license strategy, contributor terms, trademark and brand protection, and the line between the project and the product
• Advise People and Operations on employment and contractor matters across every country we hire in: EOR and PEO structures, IP assignment that holds across borders, classification, and immigration as we grow into it
• Build and lead the legal team: hire, level, and develop the lawyers and legal ops people under you, run outside counsel to a budget, and make legal a function engineers and salespeople route through by choice
• Represent Firecrawl in the policy conversation on web data access and AI: industry coalitions, amicus opportunities, and direct engagement with regulators and legislators. Where the law is unsettled, we intend to have a hand in settling it
• Cover everything else with a legal edge: insurance, government inquiries, communications review when something goes sideways, and the questions nobody has assigned yet. At our size the GC's scope is the whole company

Requirements

• You've run legal somewhere, or been the person who effectively did. GC, deputy GC, or the senior lawyer the founders actually called, at a venture-backed technology company. A first GC seat is fine if you've operated at that altitude and made calls you had to live with
• You cover the full field. Corporate, financings, and governance on one side; commercial, product, data, and IP on the other. Deep in at least one, credible in all of them, and honest about where you'll lean on outside counsel
• You have a real point of view on web data, AI, and copyright, and you can defend it. You've read the cases, you've watched the licensing market form, and you're not waiting for settled law to take a position
• You give business advice, not legal cover. The founders will ask what you would do and expect an answer: a recommendation and a risk read they can act on, not a memo listing every possible exposure. If your default answer is no, this will be frustrating for both of us
• You've been in the room when it went wrong. A demand letter, a regulator's inquiry, a deal that died on indemnity, a board meeting with bad news. Calm and clear under that is not a nice-to-have here
• You lead lawyers and non-lawyers. You've built or run a small legal team, held outside counsel to a budget, and earned the trust of engineers and salespeople by being fast, clear, and unpretentious
• You're an AI super user. Non-negotiable. You already use AI heavily in your own practice, you'll set the standard for the legal team, and you want to push it further than anyone has taken it in this profession
• Membership in good standing in at least one US state bar, and either California bar membership or eligibility to register as in-house counsel in California. Preferred: a J.D. from a T14 law school or comparable academic credentials, training at an Am Law 100 firm or a comparably sophisticated firm, and in-house years at a company that scaled fast. Exposure to data licensing, privacy, IP, open source, or data-access disputes is a strong plus

Skills

Required

• Legal strategy and risk posture
• Open source license strategy
• Team leadership and management
• AI super user (non-negotiable)

Benefits

• Available to all employees
• Salary that makes sense: $310,000–$392,000 USD/year. Based on impact, not tenure
• Own a piece: Gain competitive equity in what you're helping build
• Generous PTO: 15 days mandatory, anything after 24 days, just ask (holidays excluded). Take the time you need to recharge
• Parental leave: 12 weeks fully paid, for all parents
• Wellness stipend: $100 USD/month for the gym, therapy, massages, or whatever keeps you human
• Learning & Development: Expense up to $1,000 USD/year toward anything that helps you grow professionally
• Team offsites: A change of scenery, minus the trust falls
• Sabbatical: 3 paid months off after 4 years, do something fun and new
• Available to US-based full-time employees
• Full coverage, no red tape: Medical, dental, and vision (100% for employees, 50% for partner and kids). No weird loopholes, just care that works
• Life & Disability insurance: Employer-paid basic life and AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Coverage for life's curveballs
• Virtual care and a health guide: Teladoc for the couch doctor visit, plus Rightway to answer coverage questions and fight billing errors for you
• Mental health: Talkspace, therapy and psychiatry on your schedule
• Fertility and family building: Carrot, covering you and your partner
• EAP: Free confidential counseling, legal and financial consults, and online will prep through Guardian
• 401(k) plan: Retirement might be a ways off, but future-you will thank you
• Pre-tax benefits: HSA, FSA, and commuter benefits to help your wallet out a bit
• Supplemental options: Extra life and AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, plus pet, legal, and identity protection through MetLife
• Available to SF-based employees
• SF HQ perks: Snacks, drinks, team lunches, intense ping pong, and peak startup energy
• E-Bike transportation: A loaner electric bike to get you around the city, on us