---
title: 'Senior Legal Counsel at Generalist'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-legal-counsel-generalist-san-mateo-t600f8nkb79n'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-16'
---

# Senior Legal Counsel at Generalist

- **Company:** Generalist
- **Location:** San Mateo, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-09
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/generalist/ca4bf21b-8a8a-4133-971f-a939d72a1b4d

## Job description

## About Generalist

At Generalist, we are on a mission to build general intelligence for the physical world and make it useful to everyone. We believe the industries and homes of the future will depend on humans and machines working together in new ways. Robots can help us build more and get more done. We build embodied foundation models, starting with a focus on dexterity. This requires advancing the frontiers of data, models, and hardware, to enable robots to intelligently interact with the physical world. The company embraces both large-scale AI and robotics as core to its DNA. Our team of researchers, roboticists, and company builders come from OpenAI, Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind, and other frontier labs—with a track record of shipping AI breakthroughs. Before Generalist, we pioneered large embodied multimodal models and vision-language-action models https://research.google/blog/palm-e-an-embodied-multimodal-language-model/ [RT-2](https://deepmind.google/blog/rt-2-new-model-translates-vision-and-language-into-action/), [Gemini Robotics](https://deepmind.google/models/gemini-robotics/)), launched and scaled [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/) and [GPT-4](https://openai.com/index/gpt-4-research/) to hundreds of millions of users, engineered the foundations of autonomous driving, built next-generation robots ([Atlas](https://bostondynamics.com/atlas/), [Spot](https://bostondynamics.com/products/spot/), [Stretch](https://bostondynamics.com/products/stretch/)) and pushed the limits of what they can do (from [parkour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk) to [manipulation](https://bostondynamics.com/blog/large-behavior-models-atlas-find-new-footing/), and [testing robustness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFuA50H9uek)). We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. As Generalist’s first in-house legal hire, you will take broad ownership across commercial, corporate, privacy, and technology matters and help build the legal function as the company scales. You’ll work closely with company leadership and Applied AI & Partnerships while managing external counsel where specialized support is needed. The ideal candidate has strong foundational experience in commercial and corporate law, but is also deeply interested in emerging technology. You should be comfortable working through questions where there may be limited precedent, particularly around AI, machine learning, data, privacy, intellectual property, and new technology business models. This role is designed for an experienced, highly independent lawyer who wants to remain hands-on while taking on significant responsibility. For an exceptional candidate with the breadth and experience to serve as the company’s senior-most legal leader, we are open to leveling the role accordingly.

## Responsibilities

- Commercial & strategic transactions: Draft, review, and negotiate commercial agreements, including strategic partnerships, customer and vendor contracts, pilots, SOWs, NDAs, and other technology transactions; support complex negotiations with Partnerships and company leadership.
- Corporate & fundraising: Support financings, fundraising, corporate governance, board and stockholder matters, diligence, and other corporate workstreams, coordinating with external counsel as needed.
- AI, data & technology: Advise on legal issues related to Generalist’s technology, including training data, data-use rights, models and fine-tunes, intellectual property, confidentiality and privacy, deployment, and other emerging AI and robotics issues.
- Legal advice & risk management: Serve as a practical legal advisor across the company, translating legal risk into clear recommendations that help teams move quickly and make sound decisions.
- Legal infrastructure & external counsel: Build scalable templates, playbooks, policies, and processes, and manage outside counsel where specialized support is needed.
- Emerging legal landscape: Stay current on developments in AI, LLMs, robotics, privacy, intellectual property, regulation, market practices, and contractual precedent, and take on new legal issues as they arise.

## Minimum Qualifications

- JD and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar.
- 6–10+ years of relevant legal experience, including meaningful experience at a technology company, technology-focused law firm, or both.
- Strong experience drafting and negotiating commercial technology agreements.
- Ability to independently identify legal issues, assess risk, develop a recommendation, and drive matters to resolution without requiring significant day-to-day supervision.
- Strong grounding in corporate and commercial law, with the ability to work across a broad range of legal issues rather than specializing narrowly in a single area.
- Ability to understand complex technical concepts, work effectively with engineering and research teams, and advise on technology, data, intellectual property, privacy, or related legal issues.
- Excellent commercial judgment and an ability to give clear, practical advice rather than simply identifying legal risks.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex legal concepts clearly to non-lawyers.
- Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment where the applicable law, market norms, and contractual precedent may still be developing.

## Preferred Qualifications

- Experience working in-house at an AI, machine learning, robotics, software, or other frontier technology company, especially growth-stage startups.
- Significant experience leading or supporting complex commercial deals, strategic transactions, financings, acquisitions, investments, and other high-value or high-impact legal transactions from structuring through execution.
- Experience negotiating agreements involving AI models, training data, data licensing, model outputs, fine-tuning, intellectual property, or other emerging technology issues.
- Familiarity with current commercial and legal practices in generative AI and LLM-related transactions.

## About Generalist

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Generalist is a frontier AI research and product company building general-purpose intelligence for the physical world through embodied foundation models for robots.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: San Mateo, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Pete Florence (Co-Founder & CEO), Andy Zeng (Co-Founder & Chief Scientist)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Robotics Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Embodied AI
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprises operating factories, warehouses, laboratories, restaurants, and logistics centers; eventually homes.
- **Mission**: “Make general-purpose robots a reality. We build embodied foundation models for the physical world.”

## Products & Services
- **GEN-1**: General-purpose AI model for robotics that achieves ~99% average success rate on tasks (vs. 64% for prior state-of-the-art) and completes tasks roughly 3x faster. Trained on half a million hours of real-world data collected via low-cost wearable devices. Available to early-access partners as a model or API. [therobotreport.com](https://www.therobotreport.com/generalist-introduces-gen-1-general-purpose-model-for-physical-ai/)
- **GEN-0**: Previous generation model that demonstrated scaling laws in robotics. Used as the foundation for GEN-1.
- **Data Collection Devices**: Proprietary low-cost wearable hardware that captures human activities at scale, enabling pretraining without large teleoperation or simulation datasets.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $128M (Series A closed March 2025; earlier seed round led by NVentures) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/generalistai)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: NVentures (seed lead); Board Director Ellen Chisa. Series A investor not named in public data.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 325% YoY to 42 employees. GEN-1 model released five months after GEN-0, with production-level reliability. Early-access partnerships underway. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/generalistai)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Model performance**: GEN-1 achieves 99% average success rate across tasks like kitting auto parts, folding T-shirts, packing phones – a step change from sub-70% success by previous models.
- **Data efficiency**: Trained primarily on human demonstration data (wearable devices) rather than expensive robot teleoperation data; can match previous models with 10x less task-specific data.
- **Algorithmic innovations**: Custom training kernels, paged attention for real-time inference, Harmonic Reasoning, and RL post-training enable improvisation and recovery from unexpected scenarios.
- **Team pedigree**: Founders and key hires from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Boston Dynamics – bringing experience from ChatGPT, GPT-4, PaLM-E, RT-2, Gemini Robotics, Atlas, Spot, and Stretch.

## Strategic Focus
- Current priorities: Scale GEN-1’s embodied foundation model to master more complex physical tasks, expand into economically valuable settings (manufacturing, logistics, healthcare), and build the data infrastructure needed for general-purpose robots. The company is “accelerating the next phase of factories, homes, and the broader physical world.”

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Tight-knit, research-forward environment with a mix of AI and hardware engineering. On-site presence in San Francisco (SFO) and Boston (BOS). [generalistai.com/careers](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/generalist)
- **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: All open positions are listed as “On-site” (no remote or hybrid options).
- **Notable Perks**: Not explicitly disclosed, but the startup’s rapid growth and $128M funding suggest competitive compensation and equity. The team consists of leading roboticists and AI researchers, offering exposure to cutting-edge work.
- **Engineering Culture**: Heavy emphasis on technical staff (Software Engineers in ML Infra, Robotics Controls, ML Optimization, Infrastructure; Research Scientists in pretraining and post-training). Roles include hands-on robot operation and systems building.

## Sources
1. [generalistai.com](https://generalistai.com/)
2. [generalistai.com/careers](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/generalist)
3. [generalistai.com/about](https://generalistai.com/about)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/generalistai)
5. [therobotreport.com](https://www.therobotreport.com/generalist-introduces-gen-1-general-purpose-model-for-physical-ai/)

## Other roles at Generalist

- [Partnerships Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/partnerships-lead-generalist-boston-8nybcad5s025) — Boston, MA
- [Partnerships Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/partnerships-associate-generalist-san-mateo-6tjbtw8vd9hs) — San Mateo, CA / Somerville, MA
- [Strategic Deals Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-deals-lead-generalist-san-mateo-0rmkzfk4tqkx) — San Mateo, CA
- [Recruiting Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/recruiting-coordinator-generalist-san-mateo-c8zkjanpaav9) — San Mateo, CA
- [Talent Acquisition Partner](https://feeny.ai/job/talent-acquisition-partner-generalist-san-mateo-ky6enky5hd1r) — San Mateo, CA / Somerville, MA
- [Research Scientist: Post-Training](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-post-training-generalist-san-mateo-vrnttp54gr4z) — San Mateo, CA / Somerville, MA
- [Data Partnerships](https://feeny.ai/job/data-partnerships-generalist-san-mateo-tm0yccvmgxm3) — San Mateo, CA / Somerville, MA
- [Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineer-generalist-boston-74p3xtqpvs13) — Boston, MA
- [Electrical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/electrical-engineer-generalist-san-mateo-x985d69q4w17) — San Mateo, CA / Somerville, MA
- [Research Assistant](https://feeny.ai/job/research-assistant-generalist-san-mateo-1ahfzy22gp7s) — San Mateo, CA / Somerville, MA