Founding Legal Counsel

At Deeploy, we help organisations roll out AI they can trust. The rules for trustworthy AI are being written right now, and most of them are still ambiguous. As our first legal hire, you'll be the person who reads the regulation, decides what it means in practice, and builds that judgment into both our product and our company.

This is a back-office contracts seat. At an AI governance company, legal judgment sits close to the product and to every enterprise deal. You'll report to the COO and work closely with the wider c-level, who stay actively involved and hold end responsibility in their areas. You drive the legal function day to day, you're not left to carry it alone.

AI is being rolled out everywhere, but most of it is a black box. Deeploy exists to change that. We build the technical foundation that makes AI responsible: helping companies detect, understand, and prevent the harms caused by misaligned AI systems before they impact the real world.

We're an AI-native team. That means we don't just build for AI, we aim to be a frontrunner in our own work. We're constantly rethinking how we operate, and we expect everyone on the team to be part of that evolution.

What You Will Do
Regulation into practice (the core of the role)

Track and interpret the EU AI Act and the regimes around it (GDPR, DORA, sectoral rules, ISO standards, NIST frameworks), and turn obligations into concrete product and process implications.

Form clear, defensible positions where official guidance is thin, working with external partners where it helps.

Feed that interpretation into the roadmap, so our product reflects how the regulation actually lands.

Commercial contracts

Own enterprise contracting together with sales: master agreements, SaaS terms, SLAs, data processing agreements, partner and referral agreements, and NDAs.

Support deal velocity with large, regulated customers without dropping rigour.

Risk, privacy and certifications

Own our data, privacy and AI policy and the compliance behind it.

Identify, mitigate and document our own cyber, AI and privacy risks.

Lead the annual ISO 42001 and ISO 27001 audits and own the management-system documentation, partnering with security and engineering on the technical controls.

Thought leadership and go-to-market

Help shape posts, talks and material aimed at legal and compliance audiences, strengthening our standing with that crowd.

Act as a credible domain voice for prospects' and customers' legal teams, explaining how the regulation works and how Deeploy fits, supporting their decision without becoming their counsel.

Strategic matters

Work alongside C-level as in-house counsel on the bigger annual topics: funding, EU programmes and grants, investor and board matters, drawing on outside counsel where it's warranted.

Who We're Looking For
This role sits at an unusual intersection: sharp enough to form a defensible view on regulation that barely has precedent, practical enough to get an enterprise contract over the line, together with the team, in a startup environment.

Must-haves

4-8 years of legal experience, ideally gained in or alongside tech.

Experience in the tech sector, working with startups, scaleups or in another way working in a tech environment. Technically literate and comfortable working directly with product and engineering, to shape our product and it supports our customers.

A genuine interest in AI and its risk landscape (privacy, cyber, AI governance), beyond "just" using the AI tools.

Strong on novel regulation: able to read something ambiguous and form a clear, defensible position, also without every standard yet published.

Comfortable owning several work streams at once as the first and only lawyer, with C-level actively involved and backing you.

Ready to step into a…