Junior Commercial Counsel (AI & Technology) at Maincode (Melbourne, Australia)
Maincode· Melbourne, Australia·
Role details
Job description
About Maincode
Maincode is Australia's #1 AI company and the creator of Matilda, our flagship frontier AI product, and we're growing fast and building at the cutting edge of what's possible. We're looking for a junior lawyer to join our in-house team and take real ownership of the governance, compliance, and legal work that keeps us moving and building responsibly.
The Role
This is an incredible opportunity for a practitioner early in their career who wants to work at the forefront of AI, with real ownership, real autonomy, and the chance to do actual lawyering from day one. You'll be the day-to-day point of contact for legal matters across Maincode and Matilda, working closely with our team as we scale locally and internationally, and building up a keen knowledge of how AI works at the frontier.
Day to day, you'll handle governance and regulatory compliance across our products, draft and manage our legal terms and customer and partner contracts, work on audits and product-facing legal matters, and provide practical counsel to the team on a wide range of issues, all while working independently and autonomously with limited reliance on external counsel.
What we're looking for
- A qualified lawyer with 1–2 years of general commercial practice experience
- An appetite to do real lawyering and grow into a true AI specialist by handling these matters on a regular basis
- Comfort working independently and autonomously, with little reliance on external counsel
- A curious, hungry, and scrappy mindset, eager to learn, adapt, and take ownership
- A self-starter who thrives in a fast-paced, growing startup environment
Why Maincode
You'll work at the frontier of AI in Australia, with high ownership, high learning, and a genuine path to becoming a specialist in-house AI counsel as we continue to grow locally and internationally.
Why work at Maincode
- Culture: “Small team doing hard things.” High ownership, move fast, ship without permission. Values: ownership, gradient (fast learning), range, speed, taste, humility. No ego, mission‑first.
- Work environment: On‑site in Melbourne, Australia (some hybrid/remote possible with visits). Emphasis on craft and shipping.
- Research perks: For researchers – paid residency, ability to publish at top venues (NeurIPS, etc.), access to dedicated GPU cluster, direct line to production.
- Engineering focus: Modern tech stack (Python, PyTorch, CUDA, Kubernetes, Terraform, GCP); engineers work on inference infrastructure, model training, safety evals, and product features.
- Growth opportunity: From 17 people to planned expansion; early employees can shape the direction of the product and research agenda.