Senior Legal Counsel, AirGarage
$175-230k
+ Equity
Senior and Expert level
San Francisco Bay Area
Remote from US
Parking management solution
Be an early applicant
Parking management solution
101-200 employees
B2BTransportPaymentsReal Estate
Be an early applicant
$175-230k
+ Equity
Senior and Expert level
San Francisco Bay Area
Remote from US
101-200 employees
B2BTransportPaymentsReal Estate
Company mission
To rethink the 30% of downtown city real estate dedicated to parking.
Role
Who you are
- This job is for someone who has done real legal leg work at a fast-moving, operationally complex company (not someone who managed a bunch of others responsible for execution and isn’t willing / able to do the work themselves)
- Hands-on experience within a lean legal function: You've been the sole or primary legal person at a high-growth company, or worked in a very small in-house team, and have personally drafted contracts, managed compliance, run diligence, and advised leadership (not delegated it to associates)
- Equal parts strategist and executor: You're comfortable toggling between 10,000-ft strategy and ground-level detail. You'll negotiate a $5M acquisition at 10am and redline a vendor NDA at 2pm, and neither feels beneath you
- Transaction experience: You've meaningfully supported M&A deals, ideally multiple acquisitions at a growth-stage company. You know what a clean purchase agreement looks like, how to run diligence efficiently, and how to operationalize deal terms post-close
- Multi-state operational fluency: Experience advising a business that operates physical locations, assets, or services across many states. You understand the patchwork of state and local regulations and know how to build compliance systems that scale
- Commercial contracts depth: Strong command of MSAs, SOWs, licensing agreements, revenue-share structures, partnership agreements, and vendor contracts. You can draft from scratch, negotiate with sophistication, and build templates that let non-lawyers self-serve on routine deals
- Data privacy knowledge: Familiarity with privacy regulations, (Big plus if you have experience with regulations as they related to cameras, LPR/ALPR, and location data.) Experience building or maintaining privacy policies and compliance programs
- Story + judgment: Clear communicator who can translate legal risk into business terms for executives and operators. You lead with "here's how we can do this" not "here's why we can't."
- Builder mentality: You've built (or haver the expertise to build) legal playbooks, templates, SOPs, and contract management infrastructure from scratch. You find satisfaction in creating systems that outlast individual transactions
- Bias for action: You move fast, exercise judgment, and improve the system every cycle. You know when "80/20 and shipping" beats "perfect and late." Your mindset is that Legal should never slow the company down and exists to help the rest of the business move faster and more confidently
- Strongly preferred: Real estate or proptech background, prior work at a company executing a roll-up or multi-unit acquisition strategy, and California bar admission
- AirGarage is the type of company where you can grow exponentially, and we encourage you to apply to us even if you don't 100% match the candidate description
What the job involves
- As our first in-house legal hire, you'll be a hands-on Senior Legal Counsel who helps stand up AirGarage's legal function from the ground up
- You'll partner closely with our CEO and leadership team across sales, operations, product, finance, and engineering to protect the business, enable deals, and clear the path for aggressive growth
- This is not a "review contracts and wave the red flag" role
- You'll own the full spectrum of legal work across a company that operates physical infrastructure in 40+ states: commercial contracts with property owners, multi-state regulatory and permitting compliance, data privacy, employment law, and vendor negotiations
- You'll also support our outside counsel relationships and serve as a key thought partner on strategic initiatives including real estate acquisitions and M&A
- You'll help shape the processes, playbooks, and infrastructure that enables AirGarage to move fast without breaking things, turning legal from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage
- Own the contracts that matter: Draft, negotiate, and close commercial agreements with property owners, vendors, strategic partners, and technology providers. Build and maintain a scalable library of templates, playbooks, and fallback positions so the sales and ops teams can move fast with guardrails
- Support M&A execution: Assist with acquisitions across the full deal lifecycle; diligence, risk allocation, LOIs, purchase agreements, ancillary documents, closings, and post-close integration. Help develop repeatable processes that let us execute deals efficiently as we scale this strategy
- Enable real estate acquisitions: Partner with leadership and third-party partners on direct real estate acquisition — entity structuring, purchase agreements, title and diligence review, zoning and land use analysis, and financing documentation
- Own multi-state compliance: Maintain and extend our regulatory and permitting compliance infrastructure across 40+ states. Stay ahead of evolving regulations—from municipal parking ordinances to state-level data privacy and ALPR statutes, and proactively surface risks before they become fires
- Protect our data practices: Own privacy policy, data governance, and compliance related to license plate recognition, camera systems, and driver data. Ensure our practices meet or exceed requirements under California's ALPR statute and analogous laws nationwide
- Protect our intellectual property: Manage AirGarage's IP portfolio, including trademarks, patents, and trade secrets. Oversee prosecution and maintenance of filings, coordinate with outside patent and trademark counsel, and build the internal processes for identifying and protecting novel IP as the company continues to develop proprietary technology and operational methods
- Advise on employment and people matters: Provide practical, business-oriented counsel on employment law across multiple states (Including: offer letters, terminations, independent contractor classification, handbook policies, and state-specific compliance.) Be a thought partner to leadership and recruiting on sensitive people situations
- Coordinate outside counsel: Support relationships with external firms for litigation, complex transactions, antitrust review, and specialized regulatory matters. Know when to bring in outside help, how to scope engagements tightly, and how to keep spend disciplined
- Support fundraising and corporate governance: Collaborate with the CEO and VP of Finance on cap table matters, board governance, investor rights agreements, and data room readiness for future capital raises
- Build the legal operating system: Develop and refine legal intake processes, contract lifecycle management, policy documentation, and approval workflows. Leverage tools to create leverage — we want a legal function that scales with the business, not one that requires headcount to match growth
- Be a true business partner: Serve as a trusted advisor to the CEO and leadership team. The best version of this role isn't the person who finds reasons to say no, it's the person who finds the fastest, safest path to yes
- WHY THIS ROLE MAY NOT BE FOR YOU:
- Please review this section before applying. We are sharing this information up front because we don't expect this job to be appealing to everybody and we do not want to waste your time if you are not on board with all of the following
- Being the sole in-house legal team member a high growth startup means many different things, but there is one thing above all that it certainly means: legal risk, compliance posture, and the quality and speed of commercial deal execution are ultimately your responsibility to own
- This will be a hard job. We work long hours at AirGarage, including nights and weekends, because we love what we do. We are growing fast but our legal function is lean, so every day you will have new challenges and too much on your plate, but you'll be expected to find a way to deliver anyways
- Below are some of the reasons you might not want this job:
- You want a big team on day one. This is an IC role as a team of one. If you prefer directing a legal department to doing the work yourself, this won't feel right
- You expect a perfect playbook. We're building legal infrastructure, standardizing contract processes, and standing up compliance systems. You'll be writing the playbook while running the plays
- You only want to do "strategic" work. We need someone who can think about M&A deal structure in the morning and chase down a parking permit in Tulsa in the afternoon. Range and willingness to do unglamorous work is non-negotiable
- You see legal as a control function. We want a business partner who enables growth, not a gatekeeper who slows it down. If your instinct is to add process and require approvals, we're probably not a fit
- You're uncomfortable with ambiguity. We operate in 40+ states with a novel business model. There isn't always a clear precedent. You'll need to exercise judgment, move forward with imperfect information, and be right most of the time
- You want to stay in your lane. You'll touch everything — contracts, M&A, compliance, employment, privacy, corporate governance. If you want to specialize, a bigger company with a bigger legal team is a better fit
Our take
The parking industry has long adhered to traditional practices, relying on attendants and disparate payment and management systems. However, AirGarage is changing the landscape by providing software and management services to parking lot and garage owners. With its all-encompassing approach spanning from signage installation to payment handling and even parking enforcement.
One of AirGarage's key innovations is its revenue-sharing model, offering property owners a favorable 70-30 split and full transparency on earnings. This approach addresses the longstanding issue of parking managers reaping their share of revenue, leaving property owners with just a fraction of the income generated by their spaces. With over 300 locations across 38 US states under its management, AirGarage has become a pivotal player in reshaping the parking industry.
In 2025, the company closed its Series B funding round. That capital injection has gone towards scaling its platform and finetuning its data infrastructure. It not only caters to personal vehicle parking but also accommodates food trucks and cloud kitchens in need of parking and storage solutions. The future looks promising for AirGarage as it continues to modernize and streamline an industry ripe for technological transformation.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Led by a woman
Company
Company benefits
- Unlimited PTO - Enjoy travel or just take some time off -- whatever you need to relax and recharge
- Health, Dental, & Vision - Choose the benefits and health plan that best suits you and your family, we’ll cover the cost
- 401k - Plan and invest in your future with a 401K account via our partner, Guideline
- Parental Leave - We offer 12 weeks of fully paid Parental Leave to all parents to bond with a newly born, adopted, or fostered child
- Equity - Become an owner and earn equity by joining us in the early days of the company
- Remote Weeks - Take a trip with the team to live and work side by side together for a week in an interesting destination near our parking properties
Company HQ
The Castro, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Jonathon Barkl
(Co-Founder & CEO)Before co-founding AirGarage, they earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics and Economics from Arizona State University. During their time at University, they held a role of Research Scholar at NASA.
Scott Fitsimones
(Co-Founder & CTO)Alongside co-founding AirGarage, they are also the Founder of CityDAO. Previously held Engineering Internships at Facebook and CERN.
Chelsea Border
(Co-Founder & Chief Data Officer)Prior to co-founding AirGarage, they earned a Bachelor's Degree in Business Data Analytics from Arizona State University.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 1 more job at AirGarage