IP Paralegal

Location: San Francisco; Washington D.C. Workplace: Hybrid Perplexity AI is looking for a highly organized and resourceful IP Paralegal to serve as the operational backbone of a fast-growing, full-stack intellectual property program, with a primary responsibility for patent and trademark prosecution and portfolio management, and additional support work across copyrights, trade secrets, and open source compliance. This role reports to the Director of Intellectual Property and offers significant responsibility and direct exposure to novel questions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and IP law, as well as growth potential across other areas of an in-house practice group. You will partner closely with outside counsel, engineering stakeholders, and cross-functional teams to run the workflows behind a growing patent and trademark portfolio, maintain copyright and trade secret practices, and support open source compliance review. You will own day-to-day docketing and portfolio hygiene, manage outside counsel requests and billing against budget, and run intake and matter tracking so that nothing slips. You will also run our patent rewards program end-to-end and be a go-to resource for IP diligence support and IP-adjacent needs, including commercial and litigation support as needed. This role requires a genuine curiosity about using agentic AI systems to make the IP program run faster and more consistently, rather than treating AI tooling as an afterthought. This is a hands-on role for someone who is detail-obsessed, comfortable moving across multiple IP disciplines in the same week, fluent with AI and legal-technology tooling, and energized by building repeatable systems from the ground up so that a lean team can run a large, technically complex portfolio. If you are a curious person and your instinct when something breaks is to redesign the process, you will do well here. Key Responsibilities - Manage end-to-end workflows across the patent and trademark portfolios, including docketing, deadline tracking, filing coordination, portfolio maintenance, and status reporting to internal stakeholders. - Support trade secret protection practices and open source compliance review, including tracking disclosure and license obligations and flagging issues for attorney review. - Administer copyright matters, including registration filings, recordation, and portfolio record keeping. - Own intake and triage for new invention disclosures, trademark clearance requests, and other IP matters. - Manage outside counsel relationships and billing, including matter budgets, accrual tracking, invoice review against outside counsel guidelines, rate negotiation support, and matter-management hygiene in billing systems. - Run the patent rewards program. - Prepare and file U.S. trademark applications and coordinate foreign filings through local counsel. - Run preliminary clearance searches for new products and features. - Coordinate trademark office action responses, review watch notices, and recommend enforcement actions. - Manage the domain name portfolio and the online brand protection and takedown programs. - Conduct IP portfolio analysis, including filing trend tracking, competitive landscape monitoring, and gap identification, to support portfolio strategy and prosecution priorities. - Provide support on IP-adjacent matters as needed, including commercial contract IP terms and litigation support (e.g., document gathering, chronologies, and coordination with outside counsel). - Maintain and improve internal file management systems, trackers, and dashboards, keeping matter data, deadlines, and portfolio status current and audit-ready. - Build and improve the systems behind the work, including intake workflows, filing playbooks, matter templates, and escalation paths, so that recurring problems are solved structurally rather than absorbed by heroics. - Use and help evolve agentic AI tools to support IP workflows such as docketing, disclosure intake, prior art gathering, and portfolio reporting, and bring ideas for where automation can meaningfully improve program efficiency. Qualifications Need to have: - A sense of humor and a team mindset - 10+ years of experience as an IP paralegal, with a mix of in-house and law firm experience - Demonstrated AI tool fluency and genuine curiosity about applying agentic AI systems to IP program operations - Hands-on experience supporting a mix of patent and trademark prosecution workflows, including docketing, filing coordination, and portfolio maintenance - Working knowledge of copyright administration and trade secret protection practices - Experience managing outside counsel relationships, including invoice review, budget tracking, and adherence to outside counsel guidelines - Experience managing a high volume of concurrent matters and deadlines with strong organizational skills and exacting attention to detail - Ability to multitask and effectively manage competing priorities in a fast-paced startup environment - Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to correspond directly with outside counsel, inventors, and internal stakeholders - Demonstrated discretion and sound judgment when handling confidential and privileged material - Genuine interest in IP diligence work and in stepping into IP-adjacent needs as they come up, including commercial and litigation support Nice to have: - Paralegal certificate, associate's degree in paralegal studies, or bachelor's degree - Direct experience with open source license compliance review - Experience running or supporting an inventor recognition or patent rewards/incentive program - Experience supporting IP diligence for M&A, financing, or commercial transactions - Litigation support experience (e.g., discovery, document review, case file management) - Experience with IP portfolio analytics, competitive filing intelligence, or landscape mapping - Direct experience with docketing platforms, IP management software, and legal billing or matter management systems - Experience at a high-growth technology startup - Interest in artificial intelligence laws and regulations