---
title: 'Founding Legal Counsel at Basis AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-legal-counsel-basis-ai-new-york-7kepbg42kcwv'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Founding Legal Counsel at Basis AI

- **Company:** Basis AI
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-08-24
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/basis-ai/bc2e0450-fdb0-4415-8f3a-9177af741d75

## Job description

[https://app.ashbyhq.com/api/images/user-content/a3ff9955-736e-4a64-a923-c3c42b253641/17b03131-be3b-4bb8-9ad9-dbafd99fd465/image.png]

## ABOUT BASIS

Basis builds real agents that do real work in the real economy. Our agents operate for hours at a time, performing end-to-end work for some of the largest accounting firms in the world.

We recently raised $100M at >$1B valuation and are racing to deploy the most advanced applied ML at production scale.

Our investors include: Khosla Ventures (Keith Rabois & Vinod Khosla), Accel (Miles Clements), Google Ventures, Nat Friedman & Daniel Gross, Adam D'Angelo, Jeff Dean, Jack Altman, Noam Brown, Kyle Vogt, Amjad Masad, Clem Delangue and many other operators/technical leaders.

"Basis is on the frontier of building production-grade, long-horizon agents. They've pushed the limits of what we thought our models could do on real-world, economically valuable, complex accounting tasks. They've been a great collaborator in helping us shape what the future of agents looks like." — Prashant Mital, Applied AI Lead, OpenAI

## WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING

Basis is looking for our first in-house Legal Counsel to help build the legal foundation for our next stage of growth. You’ll work closely with company leadership and teams across Finance, Sales, People, and Operations, owning a broad range of commercial and corporate legal matters.

You’ll manage the company’s day-to-day contracting needs, including reviewing, drafting, and negotiating customer and vendor agreements. Beyond handling individual contracts, you’ll improve the systems behind the work: developing templates and playbooks, strengthening approval and escalation processes, tracking ongoing obligations, and helping the company move quickly while staying buttoned up.

You’ll support corporate governance and board-related matters, including cap table management, board and stockholder approvals, meeting preparation, equity administration, and fundraising. You’ll help ensure that our corporate records, governance processes, and legal obligations remain accurate and current as the company scales. You’ll also advise on strategic partnerships and other business arrangements that do not fit neatly into an established playbook.

In partnership with the People team, you’ll support personnel matters such as employment agreements, policies, employee relations, compensation and equity questions, and other workplace issues.

This is a high-ownership opportunity for an ambitious attorney who wants broad exposure, direct access to company leadership, and the chance to build a legal function from an early stage.

📍 Location: NYC, Flatiron office. In-person team, five days a week.

## WHAT YOU’LL BRING

- 2-5 years of experience practicing corporate or commercial law at a leading law firm, followed by 2+ years of experience in-house at a tech company or startup
- A J.D. from a top law school and membership in good standing with at least one US state bar
- Experience reviewing, drafting, and negotiating commercial agreements, ideally including SaaS agreements, vendor contracts, NDAs, data-processing terms, and strategic partnership agreements
- A strong grounding in corporate law, including governance, capitalization, equity matters, board processes, and financing transactions
- Excellent judgment and the ability to distinguish meaningful legal or business risks from issues that should not slow the company down
- Clear, precise writing and the ability to explain complex legal questions in practical business terms
- Strong attention to detail, organization, and follow-through across multiple concurrent matters
- A hands-on approach: you are comfortable doing the work yourself, building processes from scratch, and operating without a large legal team or established playbook
- Intellectual curiosity and the ability to learn unfamiliar products, technologies, and areas of law quickly

## WHAT WE’D LOVE TO SEE

- Commercial Judgment: Examples of negotiating complex agreements while preserving important protections and maintaining deal momentum
- Corporate and Transactional Range: Experience across venture financings, board governance, capitalization matters, strategic transactions, or emerging-company work
- Operational Mindset: A history of building templates, playbooks, approval processes, contract-management systems, or other infrastructure that made legal work faster and more reliable
- Business Partnership: Evidence that business teams view you as a practical partner who helps them reach sound decisions—not simply someone who identifies risk
- Ownership in Ambiguity: Experience independently driving unfamiliar or loosely defined matters from initial question through resolution
- Growth Potential: The ambition and capability to take on increasingly broad responsibility as the company and legal function grow

## WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

- Commercial Velocity: Sales and vendor agreements move efficiently, with clear standards for review, negotiation, approval, and escalation
- Contract Discipline: Basis has reliable templates, playbooks, records, and systems for managing contractual commitments and ongoing obligations
- Strong Governance: Board materials, approvals, cap table records, equity matters, and corporate documentation are accurate, timely, and well maintained
- Practical Risk Management: Leadership receives clear, commercially grounded advice and understands the legal implications of important decisions
- Transaction Readiness: Strategic partnerships, financings, and other significant transactions are handled thoughtfully and driven to completion
- Trusted People Partnership: Personnel matters are addressed promptly, consistently, and with sound judgment
- A Scalable Legal System: Each agreement, process, template, and decision makes the legal function more effective as Basis grows

## BENEFITS AT BASIS

We offer a competitive and thoughtful benefits package designed to support your physical, mental, and financial well-being:

- Health & Wellness: Premium Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage; Life Insurance; and 6 coaching & 6 therapy sessions through Spring Health.
- Basis will cover 100% of your Wellhub Gold https://wellhub.com/en-us/employees/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwy5rUBhB5EiwAIoAtCixehqvud1v9ahoeOFqYnuIiBWAVW73IQK_ysAVP8wl75ukUUW-myBoCDlcQAvD_BwE&utm_campaign=us_b2c_google-search-brand-plans-pricing-wellhub__el_con_ongoing_all_signup_0425&utm_content=181565584554&utm_id=22473088932&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_term=wellhub+gold+plan_801285082537 membership.
- Wellhub gives you access to gyms like Lifetime, SoulCycle, NYSC and so many more - as well as access to wellness apps like Strava & Headspace!
- Time off: Unlimited PTO + 12 paid company holidays.
- In-Office Perks: Daily meal stipends, a fully stocked kitchen, and $300 toward your custom desk setup.
- Financial Benefits: Pre-tax commuter benefits and 401(k) retirement plan
- Team Culture: Monthly office activities and frequent optional team happy hours.
- Parental Leave

## About Basis AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Basis AI builds autonomous AI agents that execute end-to-end accounting workflows for professional accounting firms.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B)
- **Headquarters**: New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Mitchell Troyanovsky (Co-Founder), Matt Harpe (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Accounting Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise SaaS
- **Target customers**: B2B — Top accounting firms in the United States (CAS, Tax, Audit, Advisory practices)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "The next era of accounting" — transforming knowledge workers from doers into reviewers by deploying agents that autonomously complete work.

## Products & Services
- **Basis Platform**: An AI agent platform that runs in the background executing accounting workflows end-to-end. Core modules built for CAS, Tax, Audit, and Advisory practice areas. Agents conform to a firm’s standards, adapt to specific engagement context, and deliver finished work ready for review. Runs across cloud and on-premise accounting systems. [getbasis.ai](https://www.getbasis.ai/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: $1.15 billion (post Series B in February 2026) [getbasis.ai/careers](https://www.getbasis.ai/careers)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised — $137.6 million (across 4 rounds: Seed, Series A, Series B) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/get-basis-ai)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Accel (lead, Miles Clements), GV (Google Ventures), Khosla Ventures (Vinod Khosla and Keith Rabois), BoxGroup, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Avid Ventures, Lloyd Blankfein (former CEO Goldman Sachs, lead Series B), Adam D’Angelo (CEO Quora), Nat Friedman (former CEO GitHub), Jeff Dean (Chief Scientist Google DeepMind), Noam Brown (OpenAI o1 co-creator), Amjad Masad (CEO Replit), Eric Wu (CEO Opendoor), and many other prominent angel investors.
- **Growth Signals**: 253.7% year-over-year headcount growth (95 employees as of mid-2026, up from ~27 a year prior). Active in 10 countries. Expanded from CAS into Tax and Audit verticals. 26 active job postings as of mid-2026. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/get-basis-ai)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Deep domain accuracy**: Built on foundational accounting principles, not a generic chatbot — agents understand the logic of the work itself and adapt to firm-specific standards.
- **End-to-end execution**: Agents run autonomously for hours, collaborating with accountants at key decision points, rather than just generating text suggestions.
- **Early market leadership**: Already deployed with the largest accounting firms in the country, with partners calling it the "most exciting new technology" they’ve seen in their careers.
- **Applied ML at scale**: Hundreds of agents behind every accountant, performing real, economically productive work for paying customers today. [getbasis.ai/about](https://www.getbasis.ai/about)

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling across practice areas**: Expanding from CAS into Tax, Audit, and Advisory modules. A new "New Vertical" product design role is explicitly listed.
- **Building for a generational company**: "We believe the marginal cost of intelligence will trend toward zero… accounting is among the most important and foundational — and might happen the fastest." [getbasis.ai/about](https://www.getbasis.ai/about)
- **Deepening trust and governance**: Hiring Intelligence Architects and GRC specialists, indicating a focus on compliance, security, and enterprise-grade controls.
- **International expansion**: Already operating across 10 countries, with hires in Brazil, India, Argentina, and the UK. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/get-basis-ai)

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & intensity**: "The whole team in one room. Not a lot of formal meetings, but interesting conversations happening constantly… The standards are high and the feedback is frequent. People here are kind and fun, but they also push each other to be better." [getbasis.ai/careers](https://www.getbasis.ai/careers)
- **Engineering-centric**: Technical roles account for ~20% of headcount. Operating principles emphasize clear thinking and are referenced every day. Whiteboards everywhere.
- **Perks**: Premium Medical, Dental, Vision; Life Insurance; 6 coaching & 6 therapy sessions via Spring Health; unlimited PTO + 12 paid holidays; daily meal stipends; fully stocked kitchen; $300 custom desk setup; pre-tax commuter benefits; 401(k); paid parental leave.
- **Remote/office policy**: Office-first culture — "most of the team eats lunch and dinner together." Based in a dedicated office at 20 W 22nd St, New York (Flatiron district). No mention of fully remote roles in current postings.
- **Growth trajectory**: From ~27 to 95 employees in one year. Over 85% quarterly growth in job postings. Employees report huge responsibility from day one. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/get-basis-ai)

## Sources
1. [getbasis.ai](https://www.getbasis.ai/)
2. [getbasis.ai/careers](https://www.getbasis.ai/careers)
3. [getbasis.ai/about](https://www.getbasis.ai/about)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/get-basis-ai)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/basis-ai)

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