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As Lead Commercial Legal Counsel, you'll play a senior role in GitLab's commercial contracting work across the Americas. Reporting to the Director, Legal, Commercial, you'll help GitLab move complex, high-value deals forward by giving practical legal guidance that supports the business while managing risk. This is a role with significant ownership: you'll independently lead strategic transactions, serve as a trusted legal partner to Sales and cross-functional stakeholders, and help shape how the team handles large-enterprise, technology, and AI-related agreements.
In your first year, you'll take on some of the region's most important contracting work, strengthen consistency in how we approach negotiation and risk, and contribute to the tools and guidance that help the broader team work more effectively. If you enjoy combining strong legal judgment with business context in a fast-moving, all-remote environment, this role gives you the chance to make a clear impact.
What you’ll do- Negotiate complex commercial and technology agreements, including enterprise software, software as a service, partnership, services, consulting, marketing, licensing, data privacy, and AI-related contracts.
- Own end-to-end legal support for strategic large-enterprise transactions across the Americas, with a focus on AMER Enterprise matters.
- Advise Sales leadership and cross-functional partners on contract structure, negotiation strategy, and risk allocation.
- Assess legal and commercial risk in complex transactions and provide clear recommendations, escalation paths, and practical alternatives.
- Develop and improve templates, playbooks, policies, and supporting documentation that help the team deliver consistent deal execution.
- Monitor legal and regulatory developments relevant to commercial contracting and translate them into usable guidance for the business.
- Mentor contract managers and junior legal colleagues by sharing expertise, supporting training, and helping improve team-wide contracting practices.
- Hold a J.D. from an accredited law school and active bar membership in at least one U.S. state.
- Bring substantial experience in a law firm and/or in-house legal setting focused on commercial and technology transactions.
- Demonstrate experience negotiating and closing complex enterprise agreements involving software, software as a service, services, partnerships, data privacy, and AI-related terms.
- Show the ability to manage a high volume of strategic legal matters independently and bring them to resolution with limited supervision.
- Apply strong judgment in spotting, evaluating, and mitigating legal and business risk in sophisticated contractual matters.
- Communicate clearly with senior stakeholders and build trusted relationships across Sales and cross-functional teams.
- Contribute experience creating or improving templates, playbooks, processes, and documentation that support consistent outcomes at scale.
- Work effectively in a remote, globally distributed environment, and we welcome candidates with transferable experience from different legal and business backgrounds.
The Legal, Commercial team supports GitLab's go-to-market work by helping the business structure, negotiate, and close commercial agreements in a way that balances growth, customer needs, and risk. This team works closely with Sales and partner functions across regions in an asynchronous, all-remote environment, with shared ownership of contracting guidance, templates, and process improvements that help GitLab scale. For this role, the focus is on leading complex transactions in the Americas while contributing to team-wide consistency and practical legal support across evolving areas such as enterprise technology and AI-related contracting.
How GitLab will support you- Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
- Flexible Paid Time Off
- Team Member Resource Groups
- Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Growth and Development Fund
- Parental leave
- Home office support
Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement. Additionally, studies have shown that people from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every single qualification. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.
The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of the United States only. This range is intended to reflect the role's base salary rate in locations throughout the US. Grade level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, alignment with market data, and geographic location. The base salary range does not include any bonuses, equity, or benefits. See more information on our benefits and equity. Sales roles are also eligible for incentive pay targeted at up to 100% of the offered base salary.
- Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
- Flexible Paid Time Off
- Team Member Resource Groups
- Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Growth and Development Fund
- Parental Leave
Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement. Additionally, studies have shown that people from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every single qualification. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.
Country Hiring Guidelines: GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.
Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy. Your privacy is important to us.
GitLab is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. GitLab’s policies and practices relating to recruitment, employment, career development and advancement, promotion, and retirement are based solely on merit, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression), national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, mental or physical disability, genetic information (including family medical history), discharge status from the military, protected veteran status (which includes disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans), or any other basis protected by law. GitLab will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. See also GitLab’s EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know during the recruiting process.
Skills Required
- Hold a JD from an accredited law school and active bar membership in at least one U.S. state.
- Substantial experience in a law firm and/or in-house legal setting focused on commercial and technology transactions.
- Experience negotiating and closing complex enterprise agreements involving software, SaaS, services, partnerships, data privacy, and AI-related terms.
- Ability to manage a high volume of strategic legal matters independently and bring them to resolution with limited supervision.
- Strong judgment in spotting, evaluating, and mitigating legal and business risk in contractual matters.
- Clear communication with senior stakeholders and building trusted relationships across Sales and cross-functional teams.
- Experience creating or improving templates, playbooks, processes, and documentation that support consistent outcomes.
- Work effectively in a remote, globally distributed environment.
What the Team is Saying
GitLab Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible PTO has no set annual cap and encourages roughly 25 days per year and at least two consecutive weeks, with clear guidance for coordination and coverage. Longer stretches are allowed within documented guardrails, supporting extended rest while maintaining team continuity.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave is set at 16 weeks globally at full pay, with a toolkit and re‑entry support that ease transitions. Policies explain coordination with statutory programs where applicable to keep pay whole.
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Healthcare Strength — U.S. offerings include multiple medical options (Cigna nationwide and Kaiser in select states), plus dental, vision, EAP, Modern Health, HSAs/FSAs with employer contributions, and a travel HRA. Benefits are organized for an all‑remote workforce with clear, self‑serve handbook guidance.
GitLab Insights
What We Do
GitLab is the Intelligent Orchestration Platform where software teams and their AI agents stay in flow to amplify their capacity for innovation. Together, they automate repetitive tasks to plan, build, secure, test, deploy and maintain software. With GitLab, software teams spend less time on coordination overhead and more time on the next big idea. What started in 2011 as an open source project to help one team of programmers collaborate is now the intelligent orchestration platform millions of people use to deliver software faster, more efficiently, while strengthening security and compliance. Since the beginning, we've been firm believers in remote work, open source, DevSecOps, and iteration. We get up and log on in the morning to work alongside the GitLab community to deliver new innovations every month that help teams and their AI agents ship great code faster.
Why Work With Us
GitLab is where careers accelerate, innovation flourishes, and every voice is valued. Co-create the future with us as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.
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