Legal, Partnerships & Strategic Transactions
ABOUT BASETEN
Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products.
THE ROLE
We are hiring a senior attorney to lead the legal work behind Baseten's partnerships and strategic transactions. This is the seat where model labs, hyperscalers, distribution platforms, and our largest customers meet, and where the licenses that govern open weight models get read, negotiated, and turned into commitments we can stand behind. Reports to the Chief Legal Officer, works directly with the founders and partnerships leads, and shares the deal surface with the rest of the legal team.
Not every partnership is about revenue. Some are about awareness and being the place a lab launches. Some are about compute, capacity, and maintaining optionality. Some are about market share and developer adoption, and some are about not being locked out of a channel a competitor is building. This role has to see which game each deal is playing, structure for that, and know when a relationship that looks strategic is really a dependency. The paper is the output. The judgment is the job.
THE QUESTIONS YOU WILL WORK ON
Four questions run through nearly everything this seat touches.
Open weight licenses are becoming a market of their own
The permissive licenses that built open source software are giving way to model licenses with usage thresholds, attribution triggers, certified partner exemptions, geographic carve outs, and commercial only distribution terms, many written by labs outside the United States. Each release is a new instrument. You will read them first and help the market read them right.
Rights follow the license, responsibility follows role
The same model can be a shared API, a dedicated deployment, a customer supplied checkpoint, or a fine tune, and who holds what right changes with each. Whether Baseten is licensee, host, distributor, or acting on a customer's behalf determines what we can promise, what we can indemnify, and what no one in this market can honestly underwrite. Getting that allocation right, and explaining it plainly to a customer's outside counsel, is the core craft.
Partners who are also channels, customers, and competitors
A lab can be supplier, customer, and rival for the same workload. A hyperscaler can be our compute vendor, our distribution channel, and our competitor in one quarter. You will structure for channel conflict, exclusivity, and information flow so Baseten stays independent and customer centric.
Cross border by default
Labs, compute providers, and customers sit in different jurisdictions with different rules on export controls, sanctions, data residency, and what a license permits. Partnership paper and compliance posture have to move together, and you will work with our regulatory and policy leads to make sure they do.
WHY THIS MATTERS TO BASETEN
Our model catalog, distribution relationships, and partner channels are a large part of why customers choose us and why labs launch with us. A license question that stalls a dedicated capacity deal, a distribution term that limits how we serve a customer, or a partnership that creates a conflict we did not see coming has direct revenue and strategic consequences. This role exists to get ahead of those questions and to make Baseten the counterparty labs, platforms, and enterprises trust to get the model layer right.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Lead the legal workstream for model lab relationships: distribution agreements, hosted API and early access arrangements, token and capacity commitments, coalition and joint development agreements, and renegotiations as models and licenses evolve.
Lead strategic platform and channel deals: hyperscaler marketplace and gateway agreements, white label and reseller structures, co-sell and referral arrangements, and enterprise partnerships that combine a customer relationship with a distribution one.
Build and own Baseten's framework for open weight and custom model licenses: how we read them, how they apply across shared, dedicated, customer supplied, and fine-tuned deployments, what we confirm to customers before deployment, and where our indemnities begin and end.
Serve as the legal voice on model licensing questions in customer deals, including direct engagement with customer counsel on license interpretation, attribution and threshold mechanics, and the allocation of responsibility between Baseten, the lab, and the customer.
Advise leadership on channel strategy, conflict, and competition: exclusivity, most favored terms, information flow to partners who compete with us, and the structural protections that keep Baseten independent and customer centric.
Partner with our regulatory, policy, and security leads on the cross-border dimensions of partnership paper, including export controls, sanctions, KYC, and data residency, so that compliance posture and commercial terms move together.
Build the templates, playbooks, and per release licensing statements that let the business self-serve on standard arrangements and escalate the novel ones, and keep them current as the market changes.
Support M&A, acquihires, and other strategic or one-off transactions as needed, including diligence on inherited licenses and partner agreements.
Help build the partnerships legal function as it grows, and contribute across whatever the team needs.
WHAT WE VALUE
Reads the license. You start with the text the grant actually uses, not with what everyone assumes it says, and you can explain what it means to an engineer, a CFO, and a lab's general counsel in the same afternoon.
A point of view. You take a position, defend it, and change it when the facts change. We are not hiring someone to summarize both sides.
Structural thinking. You see how a distribution term today shapes a customer negotiation next year, and you design for the second order effects.
Technical fluency. You can hold your own on inference, model weights, fine tuning, multi tenancy, and dedicated versus shared deployments, and you know why the distinction matters for rights and responsibility.
Commercial grounding. Partnership legal work serves the business. You know which terms to hold, which to trade, and how to say so without slowing the deal down.
Builder mentality. You operate independently, build from scratch, and have low ego. You are as comfortable drafting a per release licensing statement as you are negotiating with a hyperscaler.
REQUIREMENTS
JD and active bar membership in good standing.
8+ years of technology transactions or partnerships experience, with meaningful in-house time leading partnership, licensing, or platform deals at an AI, cloud, or developer infrastructure company.
Deep familiarity with open source and open weight model licenses, including the newer custom licenses from frontier and international labs, and the ability to interpret them across deployment models.
Experience structuring strategic partnerships with counterparties who are also customers or competitors, including channel, reseller, marketplace, and co sell arrangements.
Direct experience allocating IP and indemnity risk in AI or platform agreements and explaining that allocation to sophisticated counterparties.
Clear, direct communicator who can translate license text and deal structure for founders, partnerships leads, and customer counsel.
The ability to learn, build, and master AI tooling and systems to self-serve and operate at breakneck speed.
A desire to become a recognized thought leader in your field.
YOU MIGHT EXCEL IF YOU
Have led AI partnerships or model licensing legal work at a frontier lab, hyperscaler, or AI platform company.
Have negotiated with or on behalf of model labs and understand how they think about distribution, attribution, and downstream use.
Have worked on marketplace, gateway, or ecosystem agreements and understand the economics of being a channel.
Have handled cross border licensing or distribution with labs or partners outside the United States.
Have built a licensing framework or playbook from scratch at a company that was growing faster than its paper.
Have a considered view on where the open weight ecosystem is going and what it means for the companies that host it.
BENEFITS
Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity
(U.S. only) 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents
Flexible PTO policy including company wide Winter Break (our offices are closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day!)
Paid parental leave
Fertility and family-building stipend through Carrot
(U.S. only) Company-facilitated 401(k)
Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities.
Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking team, we would love to hear from you.
At Baseten, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, where applicable).