Job description
About AssemblyAI
At AssemblyAI, we’re building at the forefront of Speech AI, creating powerful models for speech-to-text and speech understanding available through a straightforward API. With more than 200,000 developers building on our API and over 5,000 paying customers, AssemblyAI is helping unlock and support the next generation of powerful, meaningful products built with AI.
Progress in AI is moving at an unprecedented pace– and our team is made up of experts in AI research that are focused on making sure that our customers are able to stay on the cutting edge, with production-ready AI models that are constantly updating and improving as our team continues to improve accuracy, latency, and what’s possible with Speech AI. Our models consistently rank highest in industry benchmarks for accuracy, outperforming models from Google and Amazon, and up to 30% fewer hallucinations than OpenAI’s Whisper. Our models power more than 2 billion end-user experiences each day, helping companies better understand customer feedback, run more productive meetings with automated meeting notes, and helping improve childhood literacy via ed tech tools.
We’ve raised funding by leading investors including Accel, Insight Partners, Y Combinator’s AI Fund, Patrick and John Collision, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross. We’re a remote team looking to build one of the next great AI companies, and are looking for driven, talented people to help us get there!
About the role:
AssemblyAI is growing rapidly, and we’re looking for an experienced and business-minded Legal Counsel to join our team at a key moment in our company’s growth. In this role, you’ll take ownership of a well-established legal function and continue building on strong foundational work. You’ll partner closely with Sales, Procurement, Finance, Security, and senior leadership to manage a wide range of legal matters—with an initial focus on commercial contracts and the opportunity to expand into areas like privacy, compliance, and corporate support.
This is a high-impact, highly cross-functional role ideal for someone who thrives in a fast-paced, remote-first startup environment and is eager to help shape the legal and operational structure of a cutting-edge AI company.
What You’ll Do:
- Draft, review, and negotiate a variety of commercial agreements, including customer MSAs, DPAs, vendor contracts, and partner agreements
- Collaborate closely with Sales, Finance, and Security to support deal execution and manage contract-related risks
- Develop and scale legal templates, workflows, and internal processes to support our growing operations
- Lead key regulatory and compliance initiatives, including privacy and AI-related frameworks, and track legal developments that may impact our business
- Build and deliver internal policies, training, and guidance to help teams stay aligned with legal and regulatory best practices
- Provide legal support on corporate governance, employment matters, and other internal operational needs
- Serve as a trusted advisor to internal teams, offering clear, practical legal guidance in a fast-moving environment
- Communicate directly with customers and partners on legal topics to support transparency and build strong business relationships
- Take on ad hoc legal projects and high-priority cross-functional work as needed across the company
What You’ll Need:
- Juris Doctor (J.D.) from an accredited law school and active bar membership in good standing.
- 4+ years of legal experience, including a strong foundation in commercial contracts.
- Prior in-house experience at a fast-paced AI or SaaS company is highly desirable; startup experience a plus.
- Ability to communicate clearly with both legal and non-legal stakeholders and to influence decisions with sound judgment.
- Comfortable with autonomy and ambiguity, and excited to build from the ground up.
- Strong attention to detail with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment.
- A pragmatic, business-minded approach—you know when to take a firm stance and when to be flexible.
- Deep interest in AI is a strong plus.
Pay Transparency:
AssemblyAI strives to recruit and retain exceptional talent from diverse backgrounds while ensuring pay equity for our team. Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our size, stage and industry, and are one part of many compensation, benefits and other reward opportunities we provide.
There are many factors that go into salary determinations, including relevant experience, skill level and qualifications assessed during the interview process, and maintaining internal equity with peers on the team. The range shared below is a general expectation for the function as posted, but we are also open to considering candidates who may be more or less experienced than outlined in the job description. In this case, we will communicate any updates in the expected salary range.
Lastly, the provided range is the expected salary for candidates in the U.S. Outside of those regions, there may be a change in the range, which again, will be communicated to candidates.
Salary range: $192,500K - $220,000K
Working at AssemblyAI
We are a small but mighty group of startup veterans and experienced AI researchers with over 20 years of expertise in Machine Learning, Speech Recognition, and NLP. As a fully remote team, we’re looking for people to join our team who are ambitious, curious, and lead with integrity. We’re still in the early days of AI and of AssemblyAI’s journey, and are looking for teammates who won’t just fit in, but will help us define and build our company culture.
We’re committed to creating a space where our employees can bring their full selves to work and have equal opportunity to succeed. No matter your race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, origin, ability, age, veteran status, if joining this mission speaks to you, we encourage you to apply!
Keep Exploring AssemblyAI:
Check us out on YouTube!
Learn more about AI models for speech recognition
Core Transcription | Audio Intelligence | LeMUR | Try the Playground
Our $50M Series C fundraise
