--- title: 'Junior Commercial Counsel (AI & Technology) at Maincode' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/junior-commercial-counsel-ai-technology-maincode-melbourne-axbjnskc6y8h' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-11' --- # Junior Commercial Counsel (AI & Technology) at Maincode - **Company:** Maincode - **Location:** Melbourne, Australia - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-08-26 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/maincode/9b798555-c582-4560-b74c-3e817b9e6589 ## 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. ## About Maincode ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Maincode is an Australian AI research and product company building Matilda, an intelligent assistant that understands context, learns your workflow, and helps you move faster and more safely. - **Entity Type**: Private (Bootstrapped – no external funding rounds disclosed) - **Headquarters**: Melbourne, Australia - **Founded**: Not publicly disclosed (recent high-growth signals suggest founding around 2024–2025) - **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed (Dave L. is listed as Chief Coder; founder status unclear) ## Core Business - **Primary industries**: AI research, applied intelligence, product development for enterprise and knowledge workers. - **Target customers**: B2B (teams and individuals needing a nuanced, safe AI assistant), researchers, and developers. - **Mission**: “AI that earns trust in the real world, to move humans forward.” Focus on safe, transparent, and helpful AI systems. ## Products & Services - **Matilda** (flagship product, private beta 2026): AI assistant with deep contextual understanding across long conversations, multi-step reasoning (inspectable steps), proactive but permission-asking behavior, learning of user workflows over time. Built and hosted in Australia, aligned with Australian privacy standards. - **Maincoder** (open-source 1B parameter model, released Dec 2025): Code generation and transformation model optimized for low latency and cost. - **AI Research Residency** (3–6 month paid program): For late-stage PhD students and early-career researchers. Provides access to Maincode’s GPU cluster, infrastructure, and direct collaboration with the core team; aims to publish at top-tier venues. - **Inference infrastructure (MC-2 cluster)**: High‑availability, sub-200ms global latency inference using custom batching, model sharding, dynamic routing (CUDA, Kubernetes, Terraform, GCP, vLLM, AMD Instinct GPUs). - **Context Engine & Action Layer**: Proprietary frameworks for long-context reasoning and agentic tool-use/sandboxed execution (turning Matilda from chatbot to agent). - **Eval Suite**: Internal evaluation framework for model capability, safety alignment, task completion (10K+ scenarios, automated regression). ## Market Standing - **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed. - **Key Metric**: Total funding not disclosed (appears bootstrapped). Headcount: 17 employees (+360% YoY). Monthly website visits: ~14,071 (+116.3% monthly, +56,184% yearly). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: - Demonstrating first agentic payment transaction in Australia with **Mastercard** at the Australian Open 2026. - Benchmarking study with **Heidi Health** (cloud vs on‑premise inference). - **Growth Signals**: - 10 active job postings (quarterly increase +42.9%, yearly +150%). - LinkedIn followers: 4,468 (+315.6% yearly). - Traffic growth (56,184% yearly) and strong inbound interest from US (72%) and Australia (28%). - Partnership with Mastercard for a live agentic payment demo signals enterprise traction. ## Competitive Advantages - **Australian privacy by design**: Infrastructure and model behaviour aligned with Australian standards; transparency and user control emphasized. - **Research‑to‑production pipeline**: Tight integration between frontier research and a shipped product (Matilda). The research residency directly feeds into product improvements. - **Agentic safety**: Multi-step reasoning with visible steps, permission‑asking before action, and sandboxed execution – differentiating from black‑box chatbots. - **Own GPU hardware**: MC-2 cluster (AMD Instinct) allows full control over inference latency and cost. - **Talent magnet**: Small, high‑agency team attracts PhD‑level researchers with promise of publications and access to SOTA compute. ## Strategic Focus - Scale Matilda’s user base (currently private beta) and move toward general availability. - Deepen research in safety & alignment, long‑context reasoning, multimodal perception, agent orchestration, and model efficiency. - Expand enterprise partnerships (evidenced by Mastercard, Heidi Health). - Continue growing the team across engineering and research (10 open roles across infrastructure, product, and research). ## Why Work Here - **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. ## Sources 1. [maincode.com](https://maincode.com/) – Company website, product description, culture page 2. [LinkedIn – Maincode](https://au.linkedin.com/company/maincodehq) – Headcount, growth metrics, partner announcements 3. [Built In – Maincode Careers](https://builtin.com/company/maincode) – Culture summary and active job listings 4. [AI Directory – Maincode Pty Ltd](https://aidirectory.industry.gov.au/organisation/maincode-pty-ltd) – Business area and location verification 5. [maincode.com/platform](https://maincode.com/platform) – Detailed product and research area descriptions ## Other roles at Maincode - [Talent Sourcer](https://feeny.ai/job/talent-sourcer-maincode-melbourne-1y96x7ezwa0f) — Melbourne, Australia - [Psychology Researcher, Talent](https://feeny.ai/job/psychology-researcher-talent-maincode-melbourne-a14qj2zc6b6c) — Melbourne, Australia - [Forward-Deployed AI Engineer, Justice and Community Safety](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-ai-engineer-justice-and-community-safety-maincode-melbourne-72q4z3ny2v3d) — Melbourne, Australia - [Marketing Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/marketing-lead-maincode-melbourne-ejevmh3kfx3n) — Melbourne, Australia - [Forward-Deployed AI Engineer, Government and National Security](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-ai-engineer-government-and-national-security-maincode-canberra-hxax53shgchj) — Canberra, Australia - [Talent Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/talent-engineer-maincode-australia-kcyvhegegmtk) — Australia - [Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-maincode-seattle-8wcyg274fjcr) — Seattle, WA - [AI Research Resident](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-research-resident-maincode-australia-ketgdbs6fjy8) — Australia - [Research Engineer – Matilda](https://feeny.ai/job/research-engineer-matilda-maincode-melbourne-37p38pkx99xk) — Melbourne, Australia - [AI Software Engineer (Back End)](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-software-engineer-back-end-maincode-melbourne-nffdzzvrsdqk) — Melbourne, Australia