Founding General Counsel

About Starbridge

Starbridge is building the modern public sector VAR. Government software vendors need a fast, technically credible way to sell through contract vehicles, and today s distribution model is slow, dated, and stuck in old process. We re building the version that works: one platform for quoting, contracting, compliance, and payment, instead of paperwork scattered across distributors and resellers. We also run a SaaS platform that surfaces government buying signals from council meetings, budget documents, RFPs, and public records, and turns them into pipeline.

That business grew from $1M to more than $10M in ARR in under 12 months, the fastest pace of any product sold into SLED, and it s the customer base and distribution relationship we re now building the transaction layer on top of.

You will be Starbridge s first in-house lawyer, reporting directly to the CEO. Your mandate is to build the legal, contracts, and public sector compliance function from a blank page — and help Starbridge move fast and safely as we become a public sector software distributor, first through partners  contract vehicles and over time through more direct ownership of the transaction, payment, and compliance stack.

We ve raised $52M from leading venture firms including Craft, and we re on pace to be the fastest-growing product ever sold into the SLED market — $1M to more than $10M in ARR in under 12 months. Beyond helping technology companies identify and win opportunities across state, local, and education markets, we re now building the transaction rails: helping vendors and OEMs use contract vehicles, quote, contract, transact, and get paid through one modern experience.

This is a builder role. You will negotiate live deals, design our standard paper, create our risk and approval system, teach sales and finance how to move faster, manage a focused outside counsel bench, and work with product and engineering to turn legal logic into software. We don t expect you to arrive knowing every answer. We expect exceptional judgment: own the recurring work, identify gaps early, use specialists selectively, and retain the final business recommendation.

What You ll Do

• Design the legal architecture for a four-party channel — OEM, Starbridge, vehicle holder or distributor, and government buyer — including privity, payment flow, liability, reporting, and audit responsibility
• Own the core paper: OEM authorization and distribution agreements, reseller and referral agreements, public sector order forms and addenda, EULA riders, DPAs and security terms, and enterprise SaaS agreements
• Build the government contracts operating system for federal and SLED transactions: vehicle eligibility, flow-downs, representations and certifications, pricing and transaction reporting, renewals, records, and audit readiness
• Stand up a fast, trusted deal desk — templates, clause libraries, approval thresholds, fallback positions, and service levels that sales and finance actually use
• Protect Starbridge s economics across the chain: discounts, fees, markups, renewals, refunds, non-appropriation, credit, tax, insurance, and indemnity
• Treat legal as product: work with engineering to encode vehicle rules, required terms, approvals, and compliance evidence into the Starbridge platform
• Advise company-wide on commercial contracts, privacy and AI, cybersecurity, IP, employment, and governance, with specialists on call

• Active membership in a U.S. state bar in good standing
• Roughly 7–12 years of highly relevant legal experience (exceptional candidates outside that range are welcome)
• You ve personally handled multi-party public sector technology transactions involving some combination of OEMs, distributors, resellers, contract vehicles, and government customers
• Real depth in SLED procurement, enough grounding to understand how federal differs, and the learning speed to cover the rest quickly
• You negotiate commercial SaaS, channel, data, security, and IP terms as comfortably as government clauses
• You draft, redline, join the call, make the judgment, and give teams an executable path — not a memo explaining why the answer is complicated
• Yo…