Legal Director, Products & Partnerships - 11858

The Impact of a Legal Director, Products & Partnerships at Coupa:

We’re seeking a proactive and entrepreneurial Senior Counsel, Product and Partnerships to support our global AI products. In this role, you will enable growth and mitigate risk for a technology platform that is leading in the AI transformation space. You'll dive deep into cutting-edge technology, navigate fast-moving global regulatory obligations, and spearhead legal initiatives. Reporting into VP, Legal, you will partner with our top-tier product managers, engineers, and legal team, and become a trusted leader at the company. Our legal team is practical and business-minded, and it is crucial that our work not only mitigates risk but enables growth and drives customer adoption.

What You’ll Do

• Provide Strategic Guidance: Balance legal expertise with creative problem-solving to deliver risk-calibrated advice to our business leaders. Make decisions quickly and efficiently to advance company goals, without getting sidetracked by low risk issues or bureaucracy.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Design, and Technology teams from the earliest stages of development through launch and beyond, providing practical legal and compliance guidance across the full product lifecycle.
• Serve as an embedded advisor to product teams, proactively identifying legal, regulatory, privacy, and security risks and developing pragmatic solutions that enable innovation while appropriately managing risk.
• Develop a deep understanding of Coupa's software, hardware, AI, and data products to become a trusted advisor to leaders across the organization.
• Review product features, marketing materials, customer-facing communications, and other external content to identify legal and regulatory risks before publication.
• Serve as a key partner in continuously enhancing the company's compliance program, including privacy, AI governance, and related regulatory initiatives, while developing scalable policies, training, and resources that empower employees to navigate evolving legal and compliance requirements.
• Draft and negotiate product partnership agreements.
• Draft terms of use and agreements, and negotiate those with third parties, as necessary.
• Translate complex legal and regulatory issues into clear, practical, business-oriented advice that enables teams to make informed decisions quickly and confidently.
• Collaborate with other teams within the Legal department (especially Regulatory, and Commercial Counsel) on deals that cross team boundaries.
• Build legal materials, such as playbooks, FAQs, standard positions, and templates that enable business and legal teams to move quickly with clear guardrails.
• Be available to work on EST time zone.

What You Will Bring to Coupa

• Business-Minded Pragmatism: A track record of building trust with product and engineering teams by combining legal expertise, data-driven analysis, and practical problem-solving.
• Strategic Vision: The ability to see the big picture and prioritize impactful, practical ways to support company goals.
• Agility & Ownership: Decisive and action-oriented. Single-owner mentality, excelling in project execution and moving complex initiatives to completion even amidst uncertainty.
• Strong Prioritization: Ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects in a fast-paced environment while effectively adjusting strategies in response to shifting priorities, legal developments, and evolving risk tolerance.
• Adaptability: Open-minded and flexible; can easily adjust strategies as company goals, legal landscapes, and risk tolerances evolve.
• Technical Muscle: Understanding of AI technology, and attendant legal risks. Understanding of basic product concepts - cloud infrastructure, APIs, open source, etc. Capable of quickly understanding new innovations.
• Regulatory Knowledge: Strong understanding of the global regulatory environment, ideally with experience applying the EU AI Act, EU Data Act.
• Commercial Experience: Experience negotiating commercial agreements.
• Collaborative Spirit: Strong communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to work cross-functionally when necessary. Adept at collaborating and respecting subject-matter experts, without relying on other teams to make product legal decisions.
• Growth Mindset: Interest in continuously learning and growing; no task is too big or small.
• Proven ability to partner with technical teams to navigate them through novel issues at the intersection of software, hardware, and climate technology.
• Strong judgment and creativity around risk assessment and mitigation. Able to make informed decisions without compromising product agility.
• High integrity, ambition, humility, and a genuine passion for building mission-driven climate technology.
• High EQ, low ego.

Basic Qualifications

• 6+ years of relevant legal experience, ideally including meaningful commercial and/or product counseling, in-house experience at a high-growth B2B technology.
• Licensed to practice law in your state/province.