Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. AirGarage is on a mission to bring real estate online, starting with parking. 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.
Responsibilities
- 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
Skills
- Hands-on experience at 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)
- Hands-on executor (not delegator): 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 have 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
- Real estate or proptech background
- Prior work at a company executing a roll-up or multi-unit acquisition strategy
- California bar admission
Benefits
- Equity: Have a stake in the business that you’re helping to build and grow.
- Work remotely: Live and work wherever you like! We believe in folks working where they are happiest and most productive. We currently hire teammates that are located anywhere within North America.
- Health insurance: We offer health insurance and currently cover 85% of the cost of medical, dental, and vision plans for the primary employee and 50% of the cost of plans for dependents.
- Parental Leave: We offer 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave to all parents to bond with a newly born, adopted, or fostered child. The 12 weeks can be taken as a continuous leave or intermittently over the first 18 months of the child's life.
- Home office setup: Get a laptop + additional equipment needed to set you up for success.
- Time to recharge: We have an unlimited PTO policy with a minimum requirement of 10 days per year.
- 401k: Make financial planning right for you with a 401k retirement savings program.
- Team Off-sites: ~2 times per year our team comes together for a full week in places like Tahoe, Charleston, San Diego, Park City, and Austin.
- BookGarage: Our team loves to learn and grow together, so join us for our optional recurring book club.
- Room to grow: Our team will be orders of magnitude larger within a few years; as a part of our foundational team, you'll have opportunities to grow with us.
Company Overview