Associate General Counsel, Advanced AI & Privacy

Associate General Counsel, Advanced AI & Privacy

Thinking Machines Lab's mission is to empower humanity through advancing collaborative general intelligence. We're building a future where everyone has access to the knowledge and tools to make AI work for their unique needs and goals.

We are scientists, engineers, and builders who’ve created some of the most widely used AI products, including ChatGPT and Character.ai, open-weights models like Mistral, as well as popular open source projects like PyTorch, OpenAI Gym, Fairseq, and Segment Anything.

We’re looking for an attorney to own privacy strategy and advise on advanced AI development and products for Thinking Machines Lab.

You’ll work directly with teams across research, engineering, product, security, safety, and privacy to build the programs and address the issues that arise when building and operating advanced AI systems. You’ll develop deep knowledge of our technical stack, and shape proactive legal strategy for products and initiatives that don't fit neatly into existing frameworks.

This is a high-autonomy role with significant ownership. You’ll build legal frameworks that help Thinking Machines move quickly, protect users and partners, and develop AI systems in a way that reflects our mission.

What You’ll Do

• Advise research, engineering, product, and cross‑functional partners on legal issues arising from the development and release of advanced AI systems.
• Build legal frameworks for AI & privacy governance for developing and operating AI systems that are actually practical – covering training, customization, fine‑tuning, developer tools, enterprise use cases, benchmarking, release strategy, and more.
• Support research teams to advance research on AI safety and model vulnerabilities, advising on vendor engagements, external collaborations, and data usage.
• Identify and address novel legal risks across diverse legal subject matter – IP, privacy, data rights, safety, consumer protection, platform governance – and a range of development domains – training, customization, fine‑tuning, developer tools, enterprise use cases, benchmarking, safety activities and mitigations, release strategy, monitoring.

Skills and Qualifications

• 10+ years of legal experience, with significant expertise in product counseling, program development, AI regulation, and privacy.
• Client counseling skills, with the ability to exercise judgment under uncertainty and communicate practical, solution‑focused advice.
• Experience working directly with technical staff and can hold your own in a conversation about model training pipelines.

Preferred qualifications—we encourage you to apply if you meet some but not all of these:

• In‑house experience at a technology company shipping products with novel legal risk, ideally on legal issues for AI products, services, or academic research, with knowledge of the machine learning development lifecycle.
• Experience working on AI‑powered products, AI and privacy programs, or privacy‑implicating products.
• Strong familiarity with global AI regulation, data privacy, intellectual property, and regulatory issues specific to the AI domain.

Logistics

• Location: This role is based in San Francisco, California.
• Compensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $350,000–$425,000 USD.
• Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.
• Benefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.

As set forth in Thinking Machines' Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Thinking Machines Lab will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the California Fair Chance Act, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and any other applicable state or local fair chance ordinance or law.