Head of Legal / Deputy General Counsel
- Compensation
- $300K–$400K / yr
- Location
- Remote (US)
- Work setup
- Remote
- Seniority
- C level
- Employment
- Contract
- Experience
- Not specified
- Category
- Legal
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- JD or equivalent qualifying legal degree and admission to practice in a relevant jurisdiction, preferably the US.
- Typically 7+ years of relevant legal experience in-house, at a law firm, or within a nonprofit or foundation.
- Strong expertise in IP, software licensing, trademarks, copyright, and technology transactions.
- Familiarity with open-source licensing, contributor frameworks, and software governance.
- Experience advising on AI regulation, product counsel, data governance, privacy, cybersecurity, or technology risk.
- Ability to navigate complex questions around data access, user permissions, agent autonomy, and responsibility across multi-party technology ecosystems.
- Experience with nonprofit law, foundation governance, or tax-exempt organizations.
- International legal experience, particularly cross-border contracts, privacy, or international IP protection, strongly preferred.
- Excellent business judgment and communication skills, with the ability to operate independently in a fast-moving environment.
- A builder mentality and willingness to create legal processes from the ground up.
Full description
About the Foundation:
The OpenClaw Foundation is the steward of the world's largest open source AI agent project. Its mission is grounded in a foundational conviction: that AI must be open, safe, and ultimately owned by the individuals and communities who use it.
The Foundation operates across three core mandates:
- Advancing research into the human-agent relationship while continuously evolving the OpenClaw platform;
- Maintaining and hardening the codebase to ensure security, reliability, and long-term sustainability;
- Establishing interoperability standards for the emerging agent era, defining how agents configure, communicate, establish trust, transact, and represent user identity across ecosystems.
Modeled after the governance structures that shaped the open web and modern computing infrastructure, the Foundation serves as a neutral, multi-stakeholder convening body — the equivalent of W3C or the Linux Foundation for the agentic AI era. Major laboratories and infrastructure providers collaborate under its umbrella on shared, vendor-neutral infrastructure, with no single organization controlling the roadmap or direction.
The OpenClaw Foundation believes that individuals should have full sovereignty over their AI: their data, their interactions, and the behavior and personality of their agents. Open source is not incidental to this mission but central to it — code must remain free to use, modify, and build upon. The future of agentic AI will be defined by a broad, developer-driven community, not prescribed by any single commercial interest.
The Role
The OpenClaw Foundation is seeking a Head of Legal / Deputy General Counsel to build and lead its legal function. This person will advise Foundation leadership and the board across intellectual property, open-source licensing, product security, commercial contracts, nonprofit governance, and international legal matters.
This is a hands-on role for a pragmatic legal leader who understands the intersection of open-source software, AI, and nonprofit institutions. You'll establish the legal frameworks that protect the Foundation's mission, enable ecosystem participation, and support long-term sustainability.
A key focus will be navigating the evolving legal and regulatory landscape surrounding AI agents, particularly as agents gain access to sensitive data, interact with third-party systems, and take actions on behalf of users. You'll help the Foundation anticipate how requirements around data access, permissions, privacy, and agent autonomy will vary across end users, enterprise customers, industries, and jurisdictions — translating these complexities into practical product guidance and scalable legal frameworks.
The ideal candidate combines deep IP and technology legal expertise with strong judgment around emerging AI regulation, data governance, and product risk. You are comfortable operating autonomously, managing outside counsel, and balancing legal rigor with the pace of innovation.