Senior Counsel, Product & Technology

Job Title- Senior Counsel, Product & Technology

Location: United States (remote working)

Department: Legal

Experience- 6-10 Years

Pay Range Minimum: $165,000 per year

Pay Range Maximum: $200,00 per year

A candidate’s pay within the range will depend on their skills, experience, education, and other factors permitted by law. This role may also be eligible for performance-based bonuses subject to company policies. In addition, this role is eligible for the following benefits subject to company policies: medical, dental, vision, pharmacy, life, accidental death & dismemberment, and disability insurance; employee assistance program; 401(k) retirement plan; 10 days of paid time off per year (some positions are eligible for need-based leave with no designated number of leave days per year); and 10 paid holidays per year

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced and technically fluent Product Legal Counsel to join our global legal team, with a primary focus on the technology underpinning HCL Software's product portfolio. This role provides legal guidance across software product development, licensing, and the third-party technology dependencies that sit behind our products — working closely with engineering, product, and procurement teams to ensure our products are built, licensed, and sourced on a sound legal footing.

Some familiarity with multi-channel distribution (direct sales, partners, marketplaces) is useful context, but is not the emphasis of this role. The priority is genuine technical understanding: how our products are architected, what they're built on, what we license in, and how we license out.

Key Responsibilities

Technology & Product Architecture Fluency

• Develop and maintain a working understanding of HCL Software's product architecture and technology stack sufficient to advise engineering and product teams on legal implications of technical design choices.
• Partner directly with engineering and product organizations to stay current on product roadmaps, technical dependencies, and emerging technology trends (e.g., AI/ML components embedded in products).
• Translate technical architecture and integration decisions into legal risk assessments that are specific and actionable, not generic.

Third-Party Technology Procurement & Vendor Dependency Management

• Support the review and negotiation of agreements with third-party technology vendors and embedded/open-source content providers whose components sit behind HCL Software's products.
• Advise procurement and engineering stakeholders on legal requirements for onboarding new third-party technology dependencies, including open-source components, before they are integrated into shipped products.
• Support development of a streamlined intake and review process for smaller technology vendor agreements, integrating them into standard procurement and release-management workflows.

Software Licensing Strategy & Drafting

• Own and maintain license templates and terms of use across the full product range, ensuring consistency and legal soundness at high volume.
• Lead on emerging licensing issues, including terms for AI-embedded functionality (e.g., IP indemnification positions for AI-generated output, data processing terms) and evolving deployment models (SaaS, PaaS, on-prem, hybrid).
• Advise on open-source software usage and compliance across the product portfolio, minimizing associated legal risk.
• Track and document approved positions on new licensing trends in a form the wider team can apply consistently.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Risk Management

• Work closely with product, engineering, data privacy, and security teams to embed data protection and security requirements into product licenses and terms of use, and to support release-management processes.
• Identify and mitigate legal risks arising from third-party integrations, technology dependencies, and platform-specific technical requirements.
• Support internal policy development and training on software licensing, third-party technology procurement, and open-source compliance.
• Assist with software-specific disputes, license compliance questions, and contractual disagreements involving technology vendors or licensees, as needed.

Multi-Channel & Regulatory Awareness (Secondary)

• Maintain general awareness of legal requirements across the company's sales channels (direct, partner, marketplace) sufficient to flag issues, without primary ownership of channel-specific negotiation or strategy.
• Support compliance with relevant data privacy (GDPR, CCPA), export control, and technology-sector regulatory requirements as they intersect with product licensing and third-party technology sourcing.

Qualifications

Required

• Law degree from an accredited law school; admission to practice law in a relevant US jurisdiction.
• 10+ years of legal experience, with a demonstrated focus on the technical side of software products, not solely commercial/sales-facing product counsel work.
• Genuine technical fluency: comfort in reading technical architecture or integration documentation, and engaging directly and credibly with engineering teams on how products are built.
• Substantive experience negotiating agreements with third-party technology vendors including integration terms, component licensing, data processing, and dependency risk, not just standard commercial contracts.
• Strong understanding of software licensing models (SaaS, PaaS, on-prem/hybrid), open-source software compliance, and product lifecycle management.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts for legal audiences and legal concepts for technical audiences.

Preferred / Advantageous

• Prior experience in-house at a technology or SaaS company, ideally in a role embedded with or adjacent to engineering, product, or technology procurement functions (rather than a purely sales-facing legal seat).
• Candidates from adjacent backgrounds are welcomed and encouraged to apply- e.g., IT/technology vendor management legal, or technology transactions role, where the profile brings strong technical fluency even without a "product counsel" title.
• Familiarity with emerging AI and other regulation and licensing practice (e.g., EU AI Act, NIST2, CRA, DORA etc.) as it applies to OEM software products.
• Working knowledge of IP, copyright, trademark, and patent protection as applied to software products.
• Experience with global software distribution and regional regulatory compliance (EU, APAC, LATAM) is a plus but not required given the technical focus of this role.
• Familiarity with agile product development processes in a technology setting.

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