Founding Legal Counsel, Deeploy

• 4-8 years of legal experience, ideally gained in or alongside tech
• Experience in the tech sector, working with startups, scaleups or in another way working in a tech environment. Technically literate and comfortable working directly with product and engineering, to shape our product and it supports our customers
• A genuine interest in AI and its risk landscape (privacy, cyber, AI governance), beyond "just" using the AI tools
• Strong on novel regulation: able to read something ambiguous and form a clear, defensible position, also without every standard yet published
• Comfortable owning several workstreams at once as the first and only lawyer, with C-level actively involved and backing you
• Ready to step into a startup, trading structure and certainty for ownership and pace. You're enterpreneurial, take ownership and focus on results
• A solid legal background; the exact qualification matters less than the capability
• Working proficiency in English, Dutch is a plus

Desirable

• As our first legal hire, you'll be the person who reads the regulation, decides what it means in practice, and builds that judgment into both our product and our company
• This is not a back-office contracts seat. At an AI governance company, legal judgment sits close to the product and to every enterprise deal
• This role sits at an unusual intersection: sharp enough to form a defensible view on regulation that barely has precedent, practical enough to get an enterprise contract over the line, together with the team, in a startup environment
• You'll report to the COO and work closely with the wider C-level, who stay actively involved and hold end responsibility in their areas. You drive the legal function day to day, you're not left to carry it alone
• Regulation into practice (the core of the role):
• Track and interpret the EU AI Act and the regimes around it (GDPR, DORA, sectoral rules, ISO standards, NIST frameworks), and turn obligations into concrete product and process implications
• Form clear, defensible positions where official guidance is thin, working with external partners where it helps
• Feed that interpretation into the roadmap, so our product reflects how the regulation actually lands
• Commercial contracts:
• Own enterprise contracting together with sales: master agreements, SaaS terms, SLAs, data processing agreements, partner and referral agreements, and NDAs
• Support deal velocity with large, regulated customers without dropping rigour
• Risk, privacy and certifications:
• Own our data, privacy and AI policy and the compliance behind it
• Identify, mitigate and document our own cyber, AI and privacy risks
• Lead the annual ISO 42001 and ISO 27001 audits and own the management-system documentation, partnering with security and engineering on the technical controls
• Thought leadership and go-to-market:
• Help shape posts, talks and material aimed at legal and compliance audiences, strengthening our standing with that crowd
• Act as a credible domain voice for prospects' and customers' legal teams, explaining how the regulation works and how Deeploy fits, supporting their decision without becoming their counsel
• Strategic matters:
• Work alongside C-level as in-house counsel on the bigger annual topics: funding, EU programmes and grants, investor and board matters, drawing on outside counsel where it's warranted
• What this role is, and what it is not:
• It is a builder role. You create the legal function, you don't maintain one that already exists. Legal currently sits with founders and some external support from law firms
• It is broad and hands-on, with regulatory interpretation first and commercial contracts a close second
• It is not a pure contracts seat, and not a compliance-checklist role
• It is not outside counsel for our customers. You support our product and go-to-market as a domain expert
• You report to the COO and sit close to every part of the business, with C-level holding end responsibility in their domains (commercial with the CEO, product with the CTO, certification with the CTO and COO, risk with the CEO and COO)

• Application: Share your LinkedIn/CV and anything you've worked on that you're proud of
• Introductory call: A 20-minute chat to introduce our team and learn more about you
• Personal and team fit: A 60-minute conversation with two people you'd work with closely
• Case study: A timeboxed case (3 hours) presented in a follow-up meeting with two team members
• Offer: If we're a fit, we'll extend an offer and welcome you aboard