Commercial Counsel, Networking & Datacenter Operations

About the role

As Commercial Counsel, Networking & Datacenter Operations for Compute and Infrastructure at Anthropic, you’ll lead legal execution for the connective tissue and the steady-state running of Anthropic’s Infrastructure. This role spans dark fiber and IRU agreements, IP transit and peering, subsea-cable capacity, network-equipment procurement, and the Operations & Maintenance (O&M), facilities-management, commissioning, decommissioning, and resilience contracting that keeps production sites online once the keys are handed over.

You’ll work in close partnership with Anthropic teammates in Datacenter Legal, Strategic Technology & Procurement, Infrastructure Security, Treasury/Risk and Public Policy, in addition to specialized outside counsel. You will serve as the primary legal owner ensuring external work product aligns with Anthropic’s commercial objectives and integrates with our overall compute and availability strategy.

Responsibilities:

• Negotiate dark fiber and IRU agreements (long-haul and metro), wavelength and lit-capacity services, IP transit and peering (settlement-free and paid), internet-exchange participation, subsea-cable capacity and landing-party agreements, carrier-hotel and meet-me-room agreements, and cross-connect MSAs

• Support the telecom regulatory interface, including FCC Section 214 authorizations, submarine-cable landing licenses and Team Telecom (EO 13913 Committee) review, the FCC’s 2025 subsea-cable security and IRU rules, private-carrier status determinations, and rights-of-way, franchise, and pole-attachment where Anthropic builds first-party fiber — working in close coordination with Infrastructure Security Legal on the national-security overlay for subsea capacity and landing-party participation

• Structure and negotiate O&M and integrated-facilities-management contracts, critical-spares and break-fix agreements, smart-hands SLAs with colo landlords, and disaster recovery and resilience contracting

• Own asset disposition, decommissioning, and media-sanitization terms, and data-hall fit-out and tenant-improvement work, in coordination with Infrastructure Security and Datacenter Legal

• Support property, builder’s-risk, business-interruption, and equipment-breakdown insurance placement with Treasury/Risk, and coordinate with Infrastructure Security Legal on guard-force, vendor-personnel, and physical-security flow-downs in O&M and facilities-management contracts

• Work closely with specialized outside counsel, ensuring their work product aligns with Anthropic’s commercial objectives

• Build and own the network and O&M contract template library, SLA-credit playbooks, and intake and approval workflows so Network and Site-Ops teams can self-serve standard transactions; train Procurement and operations partners to apply them at scale

• Manage SLA-credit claims, outage and root-cause-related disputes, warranty and break-fix claims, and pre-litigation vendor escalations, in coordination with Litigation

• Collaborate with the Compute team’s production-site and network-operations leads who handle operational execution, change management, and governance, providing legal and risk management expertise

• Understand how networking and operations legal structures interact with the compute capacity they support — availability SLAs, route diversity, and maintenance windows

• Escalate novel structures or terms that create downstream risk for Anthropic’s availability or operational flexibility; ensure vendor arrangements accommodate AI-specific requirements including high-density power, liquid cooling infrastructure, and rapid scaling capacity

Minimum qualifications:

• JD and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar

• Fluency in availability and SLA constructs, route diversity and how network and O&M terms interact with colo leases, build-to-suit agreements, and financing arrangements

• Experience with high-volume, template-driven, recurring vendor contracting and the discipline to keep it fast without losing control of risk

• Comfort with telecom regulatory concepts (FCC Section 214, cable-landing licenses, Team Telecom review, rights-of-way) and the operational hand-off from construction to commissioning to steady-state

• Ability to coordinate effectively with specialized outside counsel while maintaining strategic direction

• Strong judgment about when vendor terms create downstream risk for availability, security, or operational flexibility

• Effective collaboration skills for working with business teams who run production sites and the network and excellent communication skills that translate network and operations concepts into clear risk assessments for business stakeholders

• Genuine interest in digital infrastructure operations and appreciation for why network and site availability is mission-critical for frontier AI

Preferred qualifications:

• At least 10–12 years of relevant legal experience with meaningful exposure to telecom and network transactions (dark fiber, IRUs, transit, peering, subsea), datacenter operations, facilities management, or critical-infrastructure O&M contracting

• In-house experience at cloud service providers, neo-clouds, carriers, subsea-cable consortia, or datacenter operators supporting network, colo, and O&M transactions

• Experience at large technology companies with first-party backbone or production-site programs supporting network and operations transactions from the buy side

• Law firm experience at practices with telecom, technology transactions, or infrastructure specialization, particularly those who have worked on fiber, peering, subsea, or datacenter operations matters

• Prior involvement in transactions requiring sophisticated understanding of commissioning requirements, operational handoff, change management, and decommissioning

• Familiarity with insurance and risk-transfer structures used in large-scale operating infrastructure, and with international vendor contracting for non-US production sites

Role-specific policy: For this role, we expect staff to be able to work from our San Francisco, Seattle, Washington D.C., or New York office at least 3 days a week, though we encourage you to apply even if you might need some flexibility for an interim period of time.