Legal Counsel, Product and AI

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era.

When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done.

Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma.

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are looking for a mission-driven, technically fluent, and highly motivated attorney to join our legal team as Product and AI Counsel.

In this role, you will serve as an integrated, “full-stack” product counsel – a trusted legal partner embedded with Benchling’s product and engineering teams, supporting and helping to execute the legal strategy for our AI-powered products and core platform features across their entire lifecycle, reporting to the head of the Product, AI, and Security Legal function. You will provide end-to-end legal guidance spanning intellectual property, data privacy, AI governance, technology licensing, and commercial terms – synthesizing risk across domains rather than working in silos. This is a unique opportunity for a pragmatic, business-oriented attorney who is deeply fluent in technology (including in their own use of AI tools) and who thrives at the intersection of product development, strategic partnerships, and customer enablement. We welcome experienced product counsel as well as tech transactions attorneys who have developed broad, integrated legal skills through the demands of complex technology deals.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Core Product Counseling: Serve as a key legal partner to Benchling’s product and engineering teams – with a particular focus on those teams who are at heart of our core strategy to build AI into every aspect of our leading life sciences R&D platform – providing guidance on compliance, risk management, intellectual property, data privacy, and terms of service throughout the product lifecycle. You will engage from early product ideation through launch and beyond, identifying legal dependencies across domains and making integrated tradeoff recommendations that balance innovation with legal protection.

• AI Terms Negotiation and Operationalization: Negotiate AI service terms, amendments, and data-related provisions with enterprise customers, including complex, high-value accounts. You will maintain and improve an AI terms negotiation playbook for the broader legal team, create training materials and talk tracks for account executives, and work cross-functionally to operationalize product-related requirements negotiated in customer contracts. You will also support the legal strategy for Benchling’s MSA, TOS, and AI Service Terms as the product evolves.

• Partnerships and Licensing: Provide end-to-end legal support for strategic AI partnerships, including technology licensing, co-development agreements, data sharing arrangements, and go-to-market collaboration terms. You will structure and negotiate deals with key AI partners, as well as data licensing arrangements that advance Benchling’s AI product roadmap.

• Cross-Functional AI GTM Support: Collaborate with sales, marketing, and customer success teams to support AI go-to-market efforts, providing clear, risk-calibrated guidance that helps Benchling’s customers adopt AI features confidently. This will include supporting the development of customer-facing collateral on AI legal topics and enablement sessions for account executives and customer success representatives.

• IP Protection, Security Incident Readiness, Privacy, and AI Governance: Partner with Benchling’s Security team to develop and operationalize customer data protection and AI governance policies. Support security incident response readiness, including preparing legal playbooks and coordinating with o