---
title: 'Founding Legal Counsel & Strategic Operations at Garage'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-legal-counsel-strategic-operations-garage-new-york-bayhw1t5pg0p'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-11'
---

# Founding Legal Counsel & Strategic Operations at Garage

- **Company:** Garage
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Compensation:** $200k–$275k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-11-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/garage/0ab39cf0-3249-4095-a763-46cd78d09dba

## Job description

## About Us

Our vision is to become the marketplace for everything expensive, specialized, and difficult to move. We’re building the infrastructure that powers the procurement and disposition of assets across America’s essential industries, automating everything from discovery and payments to freight, warranty, and financing. Today, Garage operates in cities and towns across all 50 states and has surpassed $100M+ in annualized transaction volume on the platform. Our mission is to save local governments and essential services businesses time and money. We started with fire departments two years ago and have since expanded into EMS and heavy-duty, launching new verticals while growing revenue >10x last year. If you move fast, hold a high bar, and want meaningful ownership in building a category-defining company, Garage is the place to do it.

## About the Role

We're looking for an exceptional lawyer to join Garage as our first in-house legal hire, partnering with leadership on commercial, corporate, regulatory, and operational matters. You'll be involved in some of the most consequential decisions at Garage—from structuring financing transactions and evaluating acquisitions to negotiating strategic partnerships and significant agreements. You’ll shape the legal frameworks and policies governing our marketplace and oversee corporate governance, board matters, equity administration, and compliance, while building the legal infrastructure to support our growth.

## What You’ll Do

- Serve as Garage's primary internal legal advisor, partnering with leadership across commercial, corporate, regulatory, and operational matters.
- Draft, negotiate, and manage commercial agreements, including customer, vendor, and strategic partnership contracts.
- Own the legal frameworks governing our marketplace.
- Manage corporate governance, board matters, equity administration, and compliance.
- Advise and oversee outside counsel across specialized legal matters, including litigation, regulatory issues, employment, intellectual property, and complex corporate transactions.
- Structure and negotiate significant commercial partnership agreements

## Who You Are

- Must be licensed to practice law in at least one jurisdiction.
- A JD from a top law school and a minimum of 4 years of legal experience, ideally with top-tier law firm training and/or in-house experience at a high-growth company.
- Demonstrated experience independently managing and closing commercial agreements, with strong legal and business judgment.
- Ability to navigate a broad range of legal matters, work through ambiguity, and balance legal considerations with business objectives.
- Strong organizational skills and the ability to build scalable processes and systems from the ground up.

## Our Values

- Take Big Swings. We are here to transform an overlooked industry—not make small improvements around the edges. We set ambitious goals, take calculated risks, and push through setbacks. We never trade lasting impact for short-term comfort.
- Customers Come First. Our customers operate in an industry burdened by slow, expensive, and outdated processes. We attack the problems that cost them the most and measure our success by the time and money we give back to them.
- Play For the Front of the Jersey. We put the mission ahead of ourselves. We challenge each other directly, support each other relentlessly, and step up whenever the team needs us. We win together, and we have fun doing it.
- All Gas, No Ego. Building something that matters takes relentless effort. We move fast, take ownership, and see hard problems through. When we fall short, we own it, learn quickly, and come back stronger.

Why Join Garage?

- Do work that matters. Our platform helps people buy the assets that local communities rely on to keep their communities safe, clean, and operating every day.
- Help shape the company. Join as one of our first 50 employees and work directly alongside the founders.
- Make an outsized impact. You’ll join a talent-dense, high-performance team where every person moves the company forward.
- Build from a strong foundation. We’ve raised $18M, including a $13.5M Series A, from Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, Infinity Ventures, FJ Labs, and other leading investors.

## What we offer

- Competitive salary and stock options
- 100% medical, dental and vision insurance coverage
- Unlimited PTO (in addition to company observed holidays)
- Daily lunch & dinner (for employees based in NYC)
- $100/month wellness stipend
- 401(k) w/ employer match
- Pre-tax commuter benefits
- Annual team offsite
- Relocation assistance

We realize applying for jobs can feel daunting at times. We don’t expect you to check all the qualification boxes and encourage you to apply if you have experience in some of the areas.

## Equal Opportunity

As an equal-opportunity employer, we are committed to building an inclusive environment where you can be you. We work hard to evaluate all employees and job applicants consistently, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, natural origin, age, disability, pregnancy, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected class.

## About Garage

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Garage is an AI-powered marketplace that modernizes how America buys and sells essential equipment, starting with used firefighting apparatus and gear for public safety agencies.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, USA
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Martin Hunt (CEO) and Alaz Sengul (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Public safety equipment marketplace / GovTech / Software Development
- **Target customers**: B2G (Business-to-Government) — fire departments, cities, and public safety agencies across the U.S.; also serves construction, agriculture, and government surplus equipment verticals
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To help critical equipment reach communities faster, saving taxpayer dollars and supporting the industries that keep America running.

## Products & Services
- **Garage Marketplace**: An AI-powered platform that automates the entire transaction lifecycle for buying and selling used firefighting and emergency equipment — including appraisals, payments, paperwork, freight, warranty, and financing. Reduces what once took months down to minutes. Trusted by over 120 departments nationwide.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $18.625 million
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue (not publicly available); total funding raised ($18.6M)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (W24 batch), Initialized Capital, Infinity Ventures (led Series A), FJ Labs, Wayfinder Ventures. Primary YC Partner: Jared Friedman.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount grew 322.9% year-over-year (24 employees as of mid-2026)
  - Monthly employee growth of 16.5%
  - Trusted by 120+ departments nationwide
  - Series A of $13.5M raised in September 2025
  - Expanding from firefighting into construction, agriculture, and government surplus

## Competitive Advantages
- **Deep domain expertise**: Co-founder Martin Hunt worked as a paid firefighter and volunteer EMT for years, giving Garage firsthand understanding of the pain points.
- **Full-stack marketplace**: Unlike Facebook groups or classifieds, Garage handles payments, freight, financing, and paperwork — making it a one-stop, trusted transaction platform.
- **AI-powered automation**: Automates appraisals and paperwork that previously required weeks of manual effort, dramatically compressing transaction times.
- **Mission-driven brand**: Selling to public safety agencies creates a compelling narrative around saving taxpayer money and helping communities.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Deepening the firefighting equipment vertical while expanding into adjacent markets (construction, agriculture, municipal surplus).
- **Growth direction**: Scaling the sales and operations teams, building out the engineering org, and expanding the platform's capabilities for additional asset classes.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: Mission-driven startup with a tangible impact on public safety; founded by engineers and operators who met at Columbia; described as modernizing broken, manual processes with software.
- **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: On-site workspace in New York City (HQ in New York, NY).
- **Notable perks**: Offers apprenticeship programs and tuition assistance; strong focus on job training and talent development.
- **Engineering culture**: Small, fast-moving team (24 people) with a YC pedigree; opportunities to own large parts of the stack and product. Backed by top-tier investors. Recent job postings include Software Engineer, Founding Design Engineer, and Software Engineer, Growth.

## Sources
1. [Y Combinator - Garage Company Profile](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/garage-2)
2. [Y Combinator - Garage Jobs](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/garage-2/jobs)
3. [Built In - Garage Careers](https://builtin.com/company/garage)
4. [LinkedIn - Garage](https://www.linkedin.com/company/withgarage)
5. [Wayfinder Ventures - Garage](https://www.wayfinder.com/company/garage)

## Other roles at Garage

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- [Software Engineer, Design](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-design-garage-new-york-jp6ysc8wcr4q) — New York, NY
- [Software Engineer, Growth](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-growth-garage-new-york-h94a3d94yd20) — New York, NY
- [Strategic Partnerships](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-partnerships-garage-new-york-e1c853h6ejqb) — New York, NY
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