Sr. Director of Commercial and Legal Affairs

Overview

Lead Backblaze's commercial, privacy, and product legal functions as a people leader and strategic business partner across Sales, Product, Engineering, Security, and Compliance.

What you'll do

• Lead the company's commercial contracting function as the primary legal owner for complex, high-value, and strategic transactions.
• Draft, review, and negotiate sophisticated commercial agreements, including enterprise SaaS agreements, MSAs, SOWs, partnership and channel agreements, reseller agreements, professional services agreements, consulting agreements, and related technology transactions.
• Act as the senior escalation point for complex or high-risk negotiations, providing strategic guidance to Sales, Business Development, and executive stakeholders.
• Ensure commercial terms align with Backblaze's business objectives, risk tolerance, and long-term growth strategy.
• Provide practical, business-oriented legal advice on global privacy and data protection matters, including GDPR, CCPA, and other applicable data protection regimes.
• Oversee and support the development, negotiation, and maintenance of data protection agreements, privacy terms, and related contractual frameworks.
• Partner with Security, Compliance, and Product teams to assess privacy risk and integrate data protection obligations into business processes and products.
• Serve as a trusted legal advisor to Product and Engineering teams, advising on product design, feature development, and launches from inception through release.
• Counsel on data use, AI and machine learning, intellectual property, open source, and regulatory considerations impacting product development.
• Advise on the commercial, privacy, and contractual terms for AI features and AI-driven workloads.
• Lead development and continuous improvement of commercial playbooks, templates, policies, and negotiation frameworks.
• Optimize contracting processes for speed, consistency, and quality, including through AI-enabled contracting and legal tooling.
• Partner with Legal Operations to enhance tooling, workflows, and reporting related to commercial and privacy matters.
• Stay current on legal and regulatory developments relevant to cloud services, SaaS, privacy, AI, and technology transactions.
• Provide training and guidance to internal stakeholders on contracting best practices, privacy requirements, and risk awareness.
• Lead, manage, mentor, and develop legal professionals supporting commercial, privacy, and product counseling functions, including performance management.
• Set clear priorities, allocate work effectively, and partner with Legal & Compliance and senior leadership on team planning, resourcing, and process improvements.

What you'll need

• J.D. degree and active U.S. bar membership in good standing.
• 10 or more years of relevant legal experience, with substantial experience negotiating and leading complex technology transactions, including enterprise SaaS agreements and strategic partnerships.
• Deep experience drafting and negotiating complex commercial agreements, including enterprise customer and strategic partnership transactions.
• Strong understanding of SaaS business models, cloud services, and technology transactions.
• Solid working knowledge of global privacy and data protection laws, with the ability to translate legal requirements into practical business guidance.
• Demonstrated experience providing product counseling to product and engineering teams.
• Fluency in the legal issues raised by AI, including AI in products, AI-assisted contracting, and AI governance, or a strong interest and demonstrated ability to build depth in this area quickly.
• Meaningful in-house legal experience, preferably at a high-growth technology or SaaS company.
• Strong experience supporting enterprise sales motions, partner and channel relationships, and global commercial operations.
• Experience advising on data protection obligations in commercial agreements and product offerings.
• Experience providing practical legal guidance to product and engineering teams throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Prior experience managing, mentoring, and developing legal team members in an in-house environment.
• Excellent business judgment and the ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-moving environment.
• Proven ability to lead, influence, and collaborate across functions and levels of seniority.
• Clear and effective communicator who can translate complex legal issues into concise, business-friendly advice.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with, or genuine willingness to develop fluency in, AI and its legal, privacy, and commercial implications, and comfort using AI tools to work more efficiently.
• Prior experience managing, mentoring, or developing legal team members, or demonstrated readiness to take on people management responsibilities.

Details

• Fully remote (US-based).
• Reports to the Head of Legal & Compliance.
• Includes people management responsibilities.
• Base pay range: $210,000 - $264,000.