Legal Operations Lead

Location: New York Workplace: OnSite ABOUT US: AI NEEDS A NEW INFRASTRUCTURE LAYER. WE'RE BUILDING IT AT MODAL. Every era of computing brought new workloads that previous infrastructure couldn't support: mainframes, databases, and the cloud. Each time, the company that rebuilt the layer underneath defined the decade. AI is no different, except it touches everything instead of one slice, and the window to build the layer underneath it is open right now. Our customers include category-defining companies like Ramp https://modal.com/blog/how-ramp-built-a-full-context-background-coding-agent-on-modal, Cognition, DoorDash, and Suno. They rely on Modal for instant GPU access, sub-second container starts, and native storage, so it's simple to serve low-latency inference, fine-tune models, and access production-ready sandboxes at scale. We've passed $1B in annualized run rate, up 15x from a year ago. In October 2026 we raised a $750M Series D led by Accel at a $15.75B valuation. Our team includes creators of popular open-source projects (e.g.,Seaborn https://github.com/mwaskom/seaborn,Luigi https://github.com/spotify/luigi), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience. THE ROLE: We're looking for a Legal Operations Lead to join us as the first dedicated legal operations hire at Modal. You'll own the systems, records, and workflows that let a small legal team keep pace with a high-growth tech company — and you'll have an opportunity to build most of them from scratch. This is a great fit for a highly organized, systems-oriented operator who thrives in a fast-paced environment and wants to build operational foundations, not just maintain them. You'll report to our General Counsel and collaborate closely with the Finance, BizOps, GTM, and People teams. IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL: - Build and maintain contract operations, including designing the contract lifecycle management workflows and approval logic, and continuing to iterate and improve those processes - Design legal intake process to support and route legal requests from internal stakeholders - Make the legal function faster with AI and build and configure tooling to make us more efficient - Manage corporate administration and record-keeping, including Board and stockholder matters, signature coordination, and building a knowledge management system and database - Be the point person for corporate compliance, including entity management and filings, including foreign and domestic qualifications and filings and coordinate with registered agents - Support stock administration and cap table hygiene - Manage outside counsel and legal spend REQUIREMENTS: - 5+ years in legal operations, contract operations, or a corporate paralegal role, preferably at a high-growth technology company - Demonstrated ability to build and document processes from the ground up, not just execute existing ones - Experience configuring workflows and templates within Ironclad or a similar CLM - Experience with AI tools, and good instincts about where they help and where they quietly introduce risk - Sound judgment about what to handle and what to escalate BONUS: - Exposure to corporate and equity administration; familiarity with Carta or a similar equity administration platform