Develop Health is on a mission to use AI to radically accelerate access to life-saving medications. By automating complex, manual healthcare processes—like benefit verification and prior authorization— we've been growing rapidly and over the past couple of years have helped over 2.5 million patients!
We’re partnering with some of the largest pharmacy benefit managers and payers in the nation, revolutionizing how healthcare interactions occur by eliminating human delays and inefficiencies. Our small, elite team of founders and engineers have previously launched and exited successful healthcare startups including Rupa Health and Canvas Medical. We are now scaling rapidly following a major funding round.
About the roleLocation: Menlo Park or San Francisco, on site 3 days a week. Reports to: CEO.
We're hiring our first in-house lawyer. Develop Health sits in the middle of PBMs, providers, pharma manufacturers, payers and the patients they all serve, and each of them relies on us to treat them fairly. Your job is to keep it that way: every contract we sign, every feature we ship and every service we offer pharma has to keep us a neutral party all sides can trust.
You'll report to our CEO and own legal end to end as a hands-on practitioner. For at least the first year you're the only lawyer, working with outside counsel on specialist matters.
Three things define success in this role:
The contracts fit together. You know our stakeholder agreements side by side, and nothing we agree with one party creates exposure with another.
Product ships fast and stays compliant. You work alongside product and engineering, find the version of an idea that works, and explain the one constraint that actually matters.
Legal scales without you in every deal. Templates, fallback positions and playbooks let sales and partnerships close standard deals on their own, and they know exactly when to bring you in.
What you'll doReview our stakeholder agreements side by side, then fix the inconsistencies and older exposure you find.
Take over review and redlining of contracts in flight, and set turnaround times and escalation rules.
Build our contract templates, playbooks and fallback positions in Ironclad.
Lead negotiations as we add new stakeholders.
Choose and manage outside counsel for corporate, regulatory, IP and employment work, and lead the legal side of our next financing.
You've been the lawyer a business relied on. You've owned commercial contracts end to end, in-house or as a company's go-to counsel.
You see systems, not clauses. You notice how a term in one deal changes what's possible in another.
You find the yes. When something is risky, you propose the version that works instead of stopping at no.
You build so you're not the bottleneck. Templates, triage and self-serve tools come naturally to you.
You learn fast. You've picked up an unfamiliar regulatory framework or business model quickly and put it to work.
Clear writing. Your memos and redlines are short, plain and easy to act on.
Admission to practice law in at least one US state.
You don't need a healthcare background. Referral-fee rules, platform neutrality and data rights show up in many industries, and we care more about how quickly you learn than what you already know.
Bonus pointsHealthcare regulatory experience: fraud and abuse, HIPAA, or pharmacy and PBM regulation.
Legal work at a marketplace or platform company with many types of customers.
You've been a company's first legal hire before.
You want to build a team right away. This is an individual-contributor role for at least the first 12 months.
You want to litigate. If we're sued, we hire litigators. We need your judgment on when and how to escalate.
You want to specialize. Tax, securities and patent work go to outside specialists; you manage those relationships.
You need a lot of structure. There isn't much yet, and building it is the job.
Competitive base salary ($308,000–$342,000) plus meaningful early-stage equity.
A direct line to the CEO and ownership of a function from day one.
Work that directly speeds up access to medication for hundreds of thousands of patients.
If you want to build the legal foundation of a company that's changing how patients get their medications, we'd love to hear from you.
Skills Required
- Own commercial contracts end to end, either in-house or as a company’s primary legal counsel
- Admission to practice law in at least one US state
- Ability to identify interconnected risks across stakeholder agreements
- Ability to develop practical, compliant solutions in partnership with product and engineering
- Ability to build contract templates, playbooks, fallback positions, triage processes, and self-service legal tools
- Ability to learn unfamiliar regulatory frameworks or business models quickly
- Strong concise legal writing and communication skills
- Healthcare regulatory experience involving fraud and abuse, HIPAA, pharmacy, or PBM regulation
- Legal experience at a marketplace or platform company with multiple customer types
- Experience serving as a company’s first legal hire
What We Do
Develop Health, co-founded by Mel van Londen and Ben Easton, is dedicated to transforming the medication prior authorization process. Their product reduces form completion time by over 80% and increases approval rates. With over 10 years of experience in healthcare, the founding team has impacted 200k+ patients and 6k+ providers, holding notable roles at Canvas Medical, IDEO, and Rupa Health.
