AGC - Intellectual Property

Responsibilities

• Serve as embedded IP business partner to assign BUs; attend engineering, product, roadmap, and sales reviews on a recurring cadence.
• Develop deep technical fluency in supported product lines sufficient to contribute substantively in technical discussions.
• Partner with BU leaders on go-to-market strategy, competitive positioning, partnerships, and customer engagements where IP is a value driver or risk.
• Triage non-IP legal issues (commercial, employment, trade compliance, export, privacy, antitrust, trade secrets) and route to appropriate L&GA SMEs.
• Drive patent claim strategy designed to read on competitor products and roadmaps; lead competitive teardowns and reverse-engineering with engineering and outside vendors.
• Conduct infringement analyses and FTO analyses; set filing, continuation, and abandonment strategy aligned with business objectives.
• Identify monetization opportunities: SEP declarations and licensing, assertion campaigns, defensive cross‑licensing, and divestiture candidates.
• Direct and supervise outside counsel on U.S. and foreign drafting, filing, and prosecution; manage budgets and quality; draft personally for strategically critical inventions.
• Lead invention harvesting; coach inventors; adopt AI tools across invention identification, prior art / FTO search, drafting, and portfolio analytics.
• Support patent litigation and pre‑litigation matters with outside counsel; lead clearance and FTO for new products and acquisition targets.
• Support IP aspects of commercial agreements (NDAs, JDAs, supply agreements, licenses, M&A diligence) with the commercial legal team.

• JD from an accredited U.S. law school; admission to at least one U.S. state bar; USPTO registration.
• Minimum 6 years of patent law experience; mix of law firm and in‑house preferred.
• Technical degree (BS required; MS or PhD strongly preferred) in materials science, chemistry, chemical or electrical engineering, applied physics, or related discipline.
• Demonstrated experience in competitive claim drafting, FTO opinions, and patent monetization (SEP, licensing, or assertion); materials teardown experience a plus.

• Operates as a business partner — not a service provider — to product, engineering, and commercial leaders.
• Strategic mindset on patents as competitive and monetization instruments; technical fluency in the assigned domains.
• Strong outside counsel and project management across geographies; excellent communication with executives and non‑legal stakeholders.
• Preferred experience in one or more of the following:
  • Advanced materials and manufacturing technologies
    , including crystal growth for compound semiconductor and optical materials, as well as related processing and fabrication methods.
  • Thermal management and engineered material solutions
    , including high‑performance ceramics, metal‑matrix composites, thermal‑interface and heat‑spreading technologies, and materials used in laser, semiconductor capital equipment, aerospace and defense, and industrial applications.
  • Semiconductor optoelectronics and photonic device technologies
    , including lasers, modulators, photodetectors, VCSELs, EMLs, DMLs, related wafer‑level and epitaxial processes, packaging, and device integration.
  • High‑speed optical communications systems and architectures
    , including optical transceivers and AI/data center networking technologies (400G/800G/1.6T and beyond), co‑packaged optics, linear‑drive/pluggable optics, and related DSP and module‑level electronics.

• Frequent collaboration with engineering, product, and commercial teams in fast‑paced, highly technical environments.
• Regular participation in technical reviews, roadmap discussions, and cross‑functional business meetings.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities, outside counsel, and complex IP matters across global business units.
• Occasional domestic and international travel may be required to support business and legal operations.

• Onsite/Hybrid Work
• Ability to work at a computer and participate in virtual and in‑person meetings for extended periods of time.
• Ability to review, analyze, and manage detailed technical and legal documentation.
• A…