Assistant General Counsel, Product & AI Innovation | Hybrid | Reston, VA

Assistant General Counsel, Product and AI Innovation

Ellucian powers innovation for higher education, partnering with approximately 3,000 customers across 50 countries, serving more than 21 million students. Ellucian's AI-powered platform, trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, drives efficiency, personalized experiences, and strengthened engagement for all students, faculty and staff. Fueled by decades of experience with a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features best-in-class SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future.

These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, including data-rich tools for student recruitment, enrollment, and retention to workforce analytics, fundraising, and alumni engagement. Ellucian's innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners and user community of more than 45,000 provides best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

Ellucian is seeking a strategic, collaborative, business-minded and technology-forward Assistant General Counsel, Product and AI Innovation to join our growing Legal team. This role will serve as a key legal advisor working closely with Product, Engineering, Information Security, and Strategy teams, helping drive innovation while managing legal, regulatory, intellectual property, privacy, and operational risk. This role will support product development, technology innovation, artificial intelligence initiatives, strategic partnerships, and technology commercialization efforts across the company.

As a trusted business partner, you will provide practical legal guidance throughout the product lifecycle, support the development and deployment of AI-enabled solutions, and advise on technology, privacy, and data-related matters. You will work closely with cross-functional stakeholders to help ensure our products are designed, developed, and delivered responsibly while supporting Ellucian's strategic business objectives. This role will play a critical part in enabling the company's product strategy, partner ecosystem, and AI initiatives while supporting a fast-paced global SaaS business.

This role offers the opportunity to shape the legal framework supporting next-generation technologies and contribute to Ellucian's leadership in higher education technology. The ideal candidate combines deep technology and product counseling experience with strong business judgment and the ability to provide practical, solution-oriented legal guidance that supports growth and innovation.

Product & Technology Counseling

• Serve as legal advisor to Product, Engineering, Data, Security, and Innovation teams throughout the product lifecycle.
• Provide proactive legal guidance on the development, launch, enhancement, and commercialization of SaaS, cloud, data, AI-enabled, and emerging technology products and services.
• Advise on product design decisions, feature development, customer commitments, intellectual property considerations, and regulatory requirements.
• Partner with product and engineering teams to identify legal risks early and develop practical solutions that enable innovation and speed to market.
• Support product roadmap initiatives by evaluating legal implications of new technologies, business models, and strategic opportunities.

• Support Product and Engineering teams in addressing privacy and data-related legal considerations throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Review and advise on data collection, use, sharing, retention, transfer, and security-related matters.
• Partner with Privacy, Information Security, Compliance, and business stakeholders to identify and mitigate legal risks associated with product development and customer solutions.
• Provide legal guidance regarding privacy and data protection obligations under applicable laws and regulations, including GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, FERPA, and emerging AI-related regulations.
• Monitor legal and regulatory developments impacting technology, AI, privacy, and data practices and provide practical guidance to business stakeholders.

AI, Data & Emerging Technology

• Advise on data governance, data rights, data licensing, data usage, and data commercialization strategies.
• Advise on legal and regulatory issues related to artificial intelligence, machine learning, generative AI, automation, and emerging technologies.
• Counsel stakeholders on AI-related contractual, intellectual property, privacy, transparency, bias, and regulatory considerations.
• Monitor evolving legal and regulatory developments related to AI, data protection, and technology innovation and provide practical guidance to business stakeholders.
• Support enterprise AI governance initiatives and contribute to the development of policies, standards, and controls for responsible AI deployment.

Intellectual Property & Technology Commercialization

• Advise on intellectual property ownership, licensing, protection, and…