---
title: 'Senior Commercial Counsel, Enterprise at Perplexity'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-commercial-counsel-enterprise-perplexity-san-francisco-np8g1rr8mw6h'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-08'
---

# Senior Commercial Counsel, Enterprise at Perplexity

- **Company:** [Perplexity](https://feeny.ai/companies/perplexity)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $200k–$290k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Perplexity/bf978d98-404d-48a5-bcf2-a1f70f195c2b

## Job description

Perplexity is looking for a senior commercial attorney to join our Legal team. We are looking for an independent, business-practical yet diligent-minded professional who can carry live deals, extend the infrastructure we have already built, and hold the line on the terms that matter as deal volume, complexity, and regulatory surface all grow.

You will negotiate directly with large enterprise customers across a large variety of industries including financial services, healthcare, government, and other regulated industries, partner daily with Enterprise Sales, Partnerships, Deal Desk, Security, Privacy, Product, and Finance, and advise on the legal questions that come with agentic, retrieval, and API products deployed inside enterprise environments. This is a high-impact, hands-on role for someone who is genuinely a self starter.

This role is for you if you get energy from ambiguous, first‑of‑their‑kind problems and enjoy designing repeatable approaches that scale. You default to enabling the business, frame risk in practical terms, and focus on durable structures rather than one‑off fixes.

## Responsibilities

- Independently lead end-to-end drafting, review, and negotiation of Enterprise customer agreements across our suite of offerings: Enterprise Pro, Enterprise Max, Computer, and API product lines, including MSAs, order forms, SaaS and API terms, DPAs, BAAs, security exhibits, customer-paper redlines, product-specific addenda, and public-sector vehicles such as GSA MAS orders and federal RFP responses.
- Serve as a trusted legal partner to Enterprise Sales, Partnerships, Deal Desk, and Customer Success, providing fast, practical, business-aligned counsel that accelerates deal velocity, protects the terms that matter, and scales as the Sales organization grows.
- Extend and maintain the existing Enterprise negotiation playbook, DPA and Privacy Notice architecture, product-specific term libraries, and fallback positions as our product surface, customer mix, and regulatory environment evolve, so that positions compound into reusable precedent rather than being re-litigated deal by deal.
- Advise on AI-specific contract terms for enterprise deployments, including bespoke data postures; negotiate output ownership and liability, agentic-feature risk allocation and translate product operations into enterprise contract commitments.
- Partner cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Security, Privacy, Finance, and Compliance to surface and address legal risk early, particularly on customer-data flows, enterprise integrations, model routing, and customer-specific compliance requirements.
- Monitor the evolving regulatory landscape for enterprise AI, data protection, and public-sector procurement (GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, HIPAA, DORA, EU AI Act, sector-specific frameworks) and translate emerging requirements into practical contractual positions and updated playbook guidance.
- Represent Perplexity Legal externally on customer negotiation calls with counterparty counsel at sophisticated enterprises.

## What we are looking for

- Exceptional communicator who owns deadlines, proactively manages internal and external expectations, and escalates early and clearly to protect deal timelines and momentum.
- A proactive problem‑solver who defaults to “yes, and” when engaging with internal stakeholders: you look for ways to make deals work, frame risk clearly, and design long‑term, scalable solutions.
- A disciplined drafter who favors surgical, minimal‑footprint edits over wholesale rewrites, grounds positions in documented rationale, and preserves material legal meaning and risk allocation under time pressure.
- Someone who can articulate complex legal risk and concepts in the form of simple, actionable terms for non‑legal stakeholders, leads with practical “how to make this work” advice, and designs creative, long‑term solutions to novel, cutting‑edge challenges.
- Someone genuinely excited by novel, cutting‑edge challenges in AI products and the commercial and regulatory questions they surface, and who enjoys turning ambiguity into clear, reusable approaches.

## Qualifications

- JD and in good standing with an active U.S. state bar membership.
- At least 7+ years of combined law firm and in-house experience, with a substantial in-house component, and a demonstrated track record of independently owning complex enterprise SaaS or API deals from the vendor side, including work with regulated-industry customers (financial services, healthcare, or government).
- Experience advising on commercial terms and pricing structures for high‑growth SaaS/API businesses, including usage‑based and tiered pricing, pilots, and expansion frameworks.
- Familiarity with data protection and security frameworks (GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, DORA, EU AI Act) and hands-on experience negotiating DPAs.
- Strong business acumen and the ability to partner effectively with Sales, Deal Desk, Product, Security, and executive stakeholders on live deals under time pressure.
- Proven ability to triage and progress multiple concurrent deals under tight timelines while maintaining rigorous diligence, clear risk assessment, and high‑quality documentation.
- Demonstrated ability to build and extend durable legal infrastructure — playbooks, templates, precedent repositories, or self-serve tools.
- Ability to communicate clearly with business and technical audiences and to translate legal concepts into usable guidance for non-lawyers, including Sales and Deal Desk.
- Hands-on, can-do approach to tackle projects large and small, low-ego approach to working closely with the Director and across the organization, and judgment about when to escalate and when to close.
- Positive collaborative attitude, comfort with ambiguity and a fast pace, high level of integrity, and intellectual curiosity about AI technology.

## Nice to have

- Prior experience with public-sector contracting or with on-prem deployment structures.
- Experience with AI-native contracting questions related to agentic products
- Experience with contracting with regulated entities (financial institutions or health care), especially in the EU/UK.

## About Perplexity

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Perplexity builds an AI-powered answer engine that delivers accurate, real-time answers to any question, serving curious minds and professionals who demand precision and speed.
- **Entity Type**: Private (total funding $1.7B across 16 rounds)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, Andy Konwinski

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI-powered search and knowledge retrieval, Software Development
- **Target customers**: B2C (general users), B2B (enterprise API customers), and power users seeking reliable information
- **Mission**: “AI for people who expect more – more accuracy, more agency, more signal, less noise.”

## Products & Services
- **Perplexity AI (Free Tier)**: Real-time conversational search engine that synthesizes web results with citations, accessible via web and mobile app. *Type*: SaaS
- **Perplexity Pro**: Subscription offering enhanced features such as advanced AI models, multimodal search, and increased usage limits. *Type*: SaaS (subscription)
- **Perplexity API Platform**: Enables developers to integrate Perplexity’s search and reasoning capabilities into their own applications. *Type*: API
- **Perplexity Browser Extension**: Brings AI-powered search directly into the browser for quick answers without leaving the page. *Type*: Browser extension

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available in provided sources (prior reports indicate ~$9B valuation as of 2024, but not confirmed in this data set)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $1.7B (16 rounds); annual revenue ~$50M (LinkedIn estimate)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly listed in provided search results; widely known investors include IVP, NEA, Jeff Bezos, and others (not sourced here)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 11.3% YoY to 1,152 employees; operates in 54 countries; LinkedIn followers grew 131.8% yearly to >1.6M; active hiring across 48+ open roles including AI Research, Engineering, and Go-to-Market teams

## Competitive Advantages
- **Real-time, cited answers**: Unlike traditional chatbots, Perplexity grounds answers in live web results with transparent sources, building trust and accuracy.
- **Multimodal and agentic capabilities**: Continuously pushes frontier research (e.g., query-aware context compression, agents for knowledge work) that differentiates from generic LLM interfaces.
- **Vertical integration from research to product**: In-house AI research team tackles open problems unique to Perplexity’s scale, enabling fast iteration on novel methods.
- **Strong brand and user base**: Rapid consumer adoption with millions of monthly active users and high engagement.

## Strategic Focus
- **Pushing the frontier of search**: Evolving from retrieval services to code generation, agents, and full autonomy in knowledge work.
- **Expanding enterprise and API revenue**: Growing B2B footprint with API platform and enterprise solutions.
- **Global hiring and office expansion**: Offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, Austin, Washington D.C., London, Berlin, and Belgrade, with “4 days in office” hybrid model.
- **Investing in AI research**: Dedicated research division (Perplexity Research) exploring reasoning, agents, and systems to redefine how people navigate the internet.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Environment**: “Thoughtful support” culture with emphasis on craftsmanship, ownership, entrepreneurship, scholarship, and partnership. Hybrid schedule (4 days in-office) based on location.
- **Perks**: Daily catered meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner in office), office snacks, ride home program, commuter benefits, home office reimbursement, fitness classes, gym memberships.
- **Compensation & Benefits**: Competitive salary and equity packages; retirement plans with company match; flexible PTO; holiday shutdown between Christmas and New Year; 12 weeks paid bonding leave; comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
- **Relocation & Visa Support**: Relocation assistance and visa/green card sponsorship for eligible roles. Partners with immigration firm to support the process.
- **Engineering Excellence**: “Technical assessment for relevant roles”; values hands-on contribution, broad skill sets, and merit-based evaluation. Frequent Tech Talks and exposure to greenfield AI research problems.

## Sources
1. [perplexity.ai/hub/careers](https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/careers)
2. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/perplexity](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/perplexity)
3. [perplexity.ai](https://www.perplexity.ai/)
4. [linkedin.com/company/perplexity-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/perplexity-ai)
5. [research.perplexity.ai](https://research.perplexity.ai/)

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