Senior Legal Counsel

We are a fast-growing Series A startup building cutting-edge technology to revolutionize cloud development processes and support highly efficient dev&test feedback loops. We’ve closed our last $25mil round in Q4 2024, led by Notable Capital, CRV and Heavybit.

At its core, LocalStack provides a high-fidelity emulator and local cloud development platform. Imagine developing cloud applications and data pipelines entirely on your local machine within a lightweight cloud sandbox, running in Docker!

Our mission is to empower developers to rapidly build and test their cloud applications, allowing for a more enjoyable dev experience, and saving valuable time and resources.

LocalStack has a large and active developer community with over 100k active users worldwide and 290M+ downloads to date. Our customer base ranges from SMBs to Global Fortune 500 companies.

We are sustainably growing our globally distributed team across sectors

LocalStack is headquartered in Zurich/Switzerland , with a main engineering office in Vienna/Austria  and remote team members from the US, FR, UK, CA, ES, and many more countries.

Check our Notion Candidate Handbook and our GitHub!

This is a fantastic opportunity for someone to be a first in-house legal hire and grow into a Head of Legal role.

Requirements

✅ What you will be working on/responsible for

• First-line contract review (NDAs, MSAs, DPAs, Order Forms, security addenda, reseller/distributor terms, procurement redlines) is fully owned and no longer dependent on external counsel for standard commercial matters within 90 days.
• A working legal intake and prioritisation process — with clear approval thresholds by ARR and risk level — is operational across Sales, Finance, RevOps, and Security within 90 days.
• A practical contract playbook with clause library, fallback positions, and hard-no positions is built and adopted by Sales and CS within 6 months, measurably reducing deal cycle friction.
• Enterprise deal cycle predictability improves: legal is no longer a bottleneck on standard and mid-complexity enterprise deals by month 6.
• Commercial legal infrastructure (templates, self-serve tools, approval matrix, redline standards) is built to Series B/C maturity standards by month 12, with a clear recommendation on whether additional legal ops or contract manager support is needed.

✅ Experience we expect you to bring to the role

• 5–8+ years PQE, ideally with a mix of law firm and in-house SaaS experience
• Strong B2B SaaS / enterprise software contracting experience.
• Experience negotiating customer paper, not only company paper.
• Strong understanding of SaaS MSAs, DPAs, SLAs, security addenda, procurement terms, marketplace / reseller / partner contracts.
• Comfortable with US and international (mainly European) customers.
• Practical understanding of GDPR, privacy, data processing, security obligations, and subprocessor concepts.
• Strong commercial judgment: knows when to push, when to accept, and when to escalate.
• Ability to work directly with Sales, Finance, RevOps, Security, Product, and leadership.
• Comfortable in a fast-moving startup / scale-up environment without perfect processes.
• Experience creating templates, playbooks, approval matrices, and self-serve processes before.
• IP and product-use restrictions — ability to identify and negotiate clauses covering IP ownership, benchmarking, AI/ML restrictions, non-production vs. production use, and product development restrictions specific to developer tooling.
• Developer tools, infrastructure, cloud, DevOps, cybersecurity, or technical SaaS background. (preferred)
• Experience with AWS Marketplace / cloud marketplaces. (preferred)
• Experience with public sector / highly regulated customers. (preferred)
• Experience building legal playbooks from scratch. (preferred)
• Experience implementing CLM or quote-to-contract tooling. (preferred)
• Familiarity operating under US and EU legislation. (preferred)
• Exposure to equity, corporate governance, employment, and fundraising. (preferred)

 Values we hold in LocalStack

• Care: we create with compassion. We prioritize empathy and understanding in every interaction. By genuinely caring for our team, customers, and community, we create an environment where people thrive and impactful work flourishes
• Ownership: we own the outcome. We take responsibility for our work and are passionate about its impact. We foster autonomy, inspire ambition, encourage ownership, and empower everyone to unlock their potential and make an impact.
• Openness: we build trust together. We build trust through open communication and honest feedback. By sharing ideas and embracing diverse perspectives, we create stronger, more connected teams that work toward shared goals.
• Courage: we dare to innovate. We embrace bold challenges and take calculated risks to move the needle. We step outside our comfort zones, experiment fearlessly, and turn setbacks into springboards for growth.
• Excellence: we chase the extraordinary. We chase excellence by pushing boundaries and delivering results that go beyond the ordinary, constantly raising the bar and striving for greatness in everything we do. Excellence is not just the outcome, itʼs how we approach every task with purpose, passion, and a commitment to delivering exceptional value.

Benefits

• Fully remote
• Competitive salary
• Annual company retreat
• 2 extra company-wide holidays
• Friendly and inclusive workplace culture (community guilds and online company events)

Sounds like a good match?

We'd love to hear from you! Join us in shaping the future of cloud development at LocalStack.

To apply, follow the LI application process or apply on our career page. Make sure to include a short motivation outlining why you are the perfect candidate for this role.

If your profile looks like a good match, Alex Paiser will be in touch to organize further steps within 2 weeks.

Please note, that due to a high volume of candidates, we cannot offer personalized feedback to each candidate.

For US based candidates: The OTE range for this role is between $224,000-325,000 per annum and is based on experience, location and skills.