Legal Counsel Product and AI

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era.

When a breakthrough is delayed the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients or a crop from lab to field involves thousands of slow manual disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done.

Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments capture structured data and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work from academic labs to Sanofi Moderna and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma.

We are looking for a mission-driven technically fluent and highly motivated attorney to join our legal team as Product and AI Counsel.

In this role you will serve as an integrated “full-stack” product counsel – a trusted legal partner embedded with Benchling’s product and engineering teams supporting and helping to execute the legal strategy for our AI-powered products and core platform features across their entire lifecycle reporting to the head of the Product AI and Security Legal function. You will provide end-to-end legal guidance spanning intellectual property data privacy AI governance technology licensing and commercial terms – synthesizing risk across domains rather than working in silos. This is a unique opportunity for a pragmatic business-oriented attorney who is deeply fluent in technology (including in their own use of AI tools) and who thrives at the intersection of product development strategic partnerships and customer enablement. We welcome experienced product counsel as well as tech transactions attorneys who have developed broad integrated legal skills through the demands of complex technology deals.

• Core Product Counseling: Serve as a key legal partner to Benchling’s product and engineering teams – with a particular focus on those teams who are at heart of our core strategy to build AI into every aspect of our leading life sciences R&D platform – providing guidance on compliance risk management intellectual property data privacy and terms of service throughout the product lifecycle. You will engage from early product ideation through launch and beyond identifying legal dependencies across domains and making integrated tradeoff recommendations that balance innovation with legal protection.

• AI Terms Negotiation and Operationalization: Negotiate AI service terms amendments and data-related provisions with enterprise customers including complex high-value accounts. You will maintain and improve an AI terms negotiation playbook for the broader legal team create training materials and talk tracks for account executives and work cross-functionally to operationalize product-related requirements negotiated in customer contracts. You will also support the legal strategy for Benchling’s MSA TOS and AI Service Terms as the product evolves.

• Partnerships and Licensing: Provide end-to-end legal support for strategic AI partnerships including technology licensing co-development agreements data sharing arrangements and go-to-market collaboration terms. You will structure and negotiate deals with key AI partners as well as data licensing arrangements that advance Benchling’s AI product roadmap.

• Cross-Functional AI GTM Support: Collaborate with sales marketing and customer success teams to support AI go-to-market efforts providing clear risk-calibrated guidance that helps Benchling’s customers adopt AI features confidently. This will include supporting the development of customer-facing collateral on AI legal topics and enablement sessions for account executives and customer success representatives.

• IP Protection Security Incident Readiness Privacy and AI Governance: Partner with Benchling’s Security team to develop and operationalize customer data protection and AI governance policies. Support security incident response readiness including preparing legal playbooks and coordinating with outside counsel. Support the company’s Data Protection Officer on privacy and data protection matters including advising on data processing practices supporting responses to data subject requests and helping ensure compliance with global data protection regulations such as GDPR. Stay current on evolving regulations – including NIS2 the EU Data Act and the EU AI Act – and advise product and engineering teams on best practices and compliance implications for Benchling’s platform.

• Experience: 5–8+ years of relevant legal experience with meaningful in-house product counsel experience at a technology or SaaS company or equivalent experience in complex technology transactions IP licensing or technology-focused commercial work at a firm or in-house. Experience advising on AI/ML products data privacy data licensing or cloud platform issues is strongly preferred. Working knowledge of global data protection laws (such as GDPR) is a plus. Familiarity with the life sciences or biotech industry is also a plus.

• J.D. from an accredited law school and active membership in good standing of at least one U.S. state bar (California preferred).

• Strategic and Autonomous Problem Solver: You provide entrepreneurial pragmatic legal advice that integrates risk assessment across multiple domains — IP privacy regulatory commercial — into unified recommendations rather than siloed opinions. You can see both the forest and the trees synthesizing tradeoffs to help the business move forward rather than issuing binary approvals. You are comfortable owning outcomes end-to-end for your product areas knowing when and how to bring in specialist support. You are highly organized and can manage competing priorities without dropping threads.

• Exceptional Communicator: Outstanding written and verbal communication skills with a talent for distilling complexity into concise actionable guidance. You frame legal issues in product- and business-oriented terms for product leaders engineers and executives (without legalese) and you are effective at influencing cross-functional alignment.

• Technically Fluent and AI-Native: You can read architecture diagrams understand data flows and engage substantively with engineering teams — you don’t need to code but you need to understand what is being built well enough to spot issues others won’t flag. You already use AI tools (such as Claude or similar LLM-based tools) as a core part of your legal practice — for research contract analysis drafting or building workflows — and you arrive with established best practices you’re excited to share with the broader team. You embrace change with intellectual curiosity are eager to learn about Benchling’s products and the life sciences industry and proactively seek ways to improve the legal team’s impact.

We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday Tuesday and Thursday).

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Benchling welcomes everyone.

We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities backgrounds and experiences.
We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race religion color national origin gender sexual orientation age marital status veteran status or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records consistent with applicable federal state and local law including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

What We Do

Biotechnology is rewriting life as we know it from the medicines we take to the crops we grow and the household goods that we rely on every day. But moving at the new speed of science requires better technology. Benchling’s mission is to unlock the power of biotechnology. The world’s most innovative biotech companies use Benchling’s R&D Cloud to power the development of breakthrough products. Help us bring modern software to modern science. We’re on Team Science We believe in the promise of science and the teamwork required to fulfill that promise. Whether your background is in science engineering business or another field you’re on Team Science if you believe in the power of science to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

Why Work With Us

Everyday at Benchling you’re surrounded by talented people who are really excited about the work they’re doing and the impact they’re having. It’s truly uplifting to work on a product that you can believe in and to work alongside colleagues who are energized by the shared vision of a future with less disease and greater sustainability.

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