Commercial Counsel

About Us

Socket helps devs and security teams ship faster by cutting out security busywork. Thousands of orgs use Socket to safely find, audit, and manage open source code. Our customers - from Anthropic to xAI, and Figma to Vercel - love Socket (just check out their tweets to see for yourself!)

Founded by Feross Aboukhadijeh, a long-time open source maintainer with software downloaded over a billion times a month, Socket has raised $125M in funding from top angels, operators, and security leaders.

About the Role

Socket is looking for a Commercial Counsel to substantially increase our commercial contracting outcomes. You'll join a lean legal team handling around 60 contracts a month, and you'll be the person sales pulls in to get deals done: fast, collaborative with customers, and always within Socket's risk positions. You'll operate with high agency and minimal direction, use AI and automation to multiply your output, and set a new benchmark for what commercial counsel looks like at Socket.

What You'll Do

• Partner closely with sales from early in the deal cycle, shaping terms before redlines arrive and helping the team win
• Own a meaningful share of Socket's commercial contracts, driving faster turnaround and fewer deals stalled or escalated in legal
• Negotiate directly with customers and their counsel in a way that's fair, responsive and relationship-building
• Keep deals within Socket's approved risk positions, and escalate genuine exceptions to the CEO with a clear recommendation
• Use Socket's existing contracting systems, AI tools and automation to handle more volume and reduce reliance on contractors
• Find creative deal structures that unblock stuck negotiations

What You'll Bring

Required:

• Licensed attorney with substantial experience working in a high-velocity environment working with SaaS or technology company contracts
• Proven track record of delivering timely outcomes with excellent service and communication
• Sound, commercially grounded risk judgement across liability, indemnities, IP, data protection and payment terms
• Ability to operate with high agency and minimal direction
• Clear, concise communicator who can explain legal trade-offs to sales and business colleagues.

Preferred:

• Experience at a security, developer tools or infrastructure company
• Hands-on use of AI and automation tools to increase legal productivity
• Experience negotiating directly with enterprise customers and their counsel

Our Interview Process

• Phone Screen with our Talent Team
• Virtual f2f with the Hiring Manager
• Presentation
• Virtual f2f with a few members of the team
• Final call with our Founder
• References
• Offer

Hiring is a big decision on both sides. Read more about our Hiring Philosophy and how we approach the process at Socket.

Benefits: Our benefits are crafted to support you and your family, so you can take care of what matters most and thrive in and outside of work. We offer:

• Market competitive salary bands
• Meaningful equity program
• Comprehensive health benefits for you and your family (99% coverage)
• Flexible time-off, holidays, and winter shutdown to rest & recharge
• Paid parental leave
• Remote-first, with quarterly team off-sites

At Socket, we

• Pursue Excellence: We set ourselves apart by consistently delivering work of exceptional quality and distinction.
• Move with urgency and focus: We prioritize swift, decisive action.
• Think rigorously: We care about being right and it often takes reasoning from first principles to get there. We value alternative perspectives and have constructive discussions.
• Trust and amplify: We overtrust, always assume good intent, and give specific feedback to help each other improve.
• Feel a strong sense of ownership: We wear many hats and feel a strong sense of overall ownership of the company and we're non-territorial regarding our nominal domains.
• Are customer obsessed: We relentlessly prioritize the needs of our customers, striving to exceed their expectations and delight them at every interaction.