Senior Counsel, Product (Hardware)

About the Team

OpenAI's Legal team plays a crucial role in furthering OpenAI's mission by tackling innovative, fundamental legal issues in AI. If you're passionate about doing significant and unique work as a technology lawyer, this team is for you. The team comprises professionals from diverse fields, including technology, AI, privacy, IP, corporate, employment, tax law, regulatory, and litigation.

About the Role

As a member of our Product Counsel team, you will advise on a broad range of issues arising from hardware products and technologies, with a focus on software that power them. You’ll work closely with software engineering, product, design, and business teams from development through launch and ongoing support. This is a unique opportunity to engage directly with the forefront of AI legal issues. This role reports to our DGC of Hardware.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Work closely with product and engineering teams, participate in architecture and product reviews, and advise throughout development, launch, and ongoing support.

• Support software and firmware licensing, open-source, compatibility and ongoing device support.

• Provide broad product counseling on consumer experiences, user terms, disclosures, marketing claims, consumer protection and regulatory requirements.

• Advise and coordinate on product, commercial, IP, privacy, security, competition, and regulatory legal issues so product decisions and external commitments are consistent.

• Build practical guidance and review processes, adapt support to changing priorities, and take ownership of emerging issues across teams.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 8+ years of relevant legal experience, including substantial product counseling for consumer devices, software embedded in hardware, gained in-house, at a technology-focused law firm, or both.

• Can work with engineers on embedded software and firmware, hardware dependencies, and translate that understanding into practical advice.

• Have experience with software licensing and the legal issues that arise when device software, apps, and connected services work together.

• Build trusted cross-functional relationships and explain complex issues clearly, balancing legal risk with product goals and responsible development.

• Take ownership and bring an adaptable, collaborative working style: shift priorities, learn unfamiliar issues, and move between strategic advice and hands-on problem solving while knowing when to involve specialists.

• Have a JD and license or qualification to practice in CA.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair...