Head of Legal
$250k - $300k/yr
Senior, Expert
JD
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
In PersonOnsite in the Bay Area.
LegalIntellectual Property (IP), Legal Counsel & Legal Support
About the job
Requirements
- A Juris Doctor (JD) and at least 7 years of relevant legal experience in a law firm, in-house, or hybrid setting.
- Experience shaping intellectual property strategy in novel or first-in-class technologies.
- Experience with continuation strategy, claim scope negotiation, and portfolio construction.
- A strong technical background and comfort engaging engineers, scientists, and inventors on complex technical systems.
- Experience negotiating and executing complex commercial, licensing, or sponsored research agreements.
- Ability to operate independently as the senior legal owner in a fast-moving startup environment.
- Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous legal risk into clear strategic options for leadership.
- Comfort making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information.
Responsibilities
- Own the company’s intellectual property strategy across hardware, software, chemistry, and biology.
- Coordinate proactive freedom-to-operate and patentability searches with external intellectual property counsel and translate results into clear strategic guidance for leadership.
- Manage outside patent counsel across prosecution, continuation strategy, and portfolio development.
- Partner with research and development and engineering teams to ensure technical iterations are reflected in intellectual property filings and risk assessments.
- Maintain visibility into the competitive intellectual property landscape, including competitor monitoring and potential licensing targets.
- Oversee protection of trade secrets, confidential know-how, and proprietary data across internal teams and external collaborators.
- Serve as the company’s internal legal lead, identifying, prioritizing, and mitigating legal risk across the organization.
- Own the interface with external corporate counsel on governance, financings, and corporate matters.
- Advise the executive team on legal considerations across product development, regulatory strategy, and commercialization.
- Partner with Regulatory and Clinical teams on legal risk and positioning related to FDA interactions, clinical studies, and labeling.
- Build and maintain lightweight, scalable legal processes appropriate for a fast-growing biotech company.
- Lead or support negotiation of licenses, sponsored research agreements, collaborations, and other strategic partnerships.
- Draft, review, and negotiate complex commercial agreements with a strong understanding of technical and intellectual property implications.
- Ensure consistency, risk discipline, and speed across contracts as the company scales.
- Work closely with Strategy, Regulatory, and research and development teams to align the legal posture with the company’s clinical and regulatory roadmap.
- Support diligence for partnerships, financings, and strategic transactions.
- Provide pragmatic, technically grounded legal advice to non-legal stakeholders.
- Support board-level legal matters and investor diligence, including preparation of legal risk summaries and intellectual property positioning.
- Define the long-term legal function, including decisions about in-house versus external support and future hires.
Desired Qualifications
- Experience in biotech, medtech, deep tech, or another highly regulated technical domain.
- Prior in-house experience at a growth-stage company, such as serving as a first or second legal hire at a startup.
- Comfort working across hardware, software, and biological intellectual property.
- Familiarity with legal considerations around clinical studies, investigational use, or regulated product development.
About the company
UntilLabs develops reversible cryopreservation technology to extend the viability of human organs for transplantation. The goal is to keep organs alive at cryogenic temperatures long enough to improve organ matching and reduce waste from time limits, potentially weeks or months of preserved time. The approach uses cooling to very low temperatures (below -130°C) with cryoprotectants to prevent ice damage, followed by advanced warming methods to revive the organs without harm. While cryopreservation has worked for cells and simple tissues, UntilLabs works on scaling this to whole organs, tackling challenges like ice formation and nutrient/waste management in large tissues. In the long term, the company envisions whole-body reversible cryopreservation as a bridge to future medical cures.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series A
Total Funding
$58M
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2024
Get referred to UntilLabs
See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- 2026 hiring spans perfusion, cardiac biology, and organ perfusion, signaling active R&D expansion.
- Pig organ isolation and ex-vivo evaluation roles suggest near-term preclinical organ validation.
- The 2026 patent strengthens defensibility around cryoprotectants, vitrification, and rewarming hardware.
What critics are saying
- X-Therma already has FDA Breakthrough status and 120-hour kidney preservation claims.
- Until still has no public human transplant data, leaving commercialization unproven.
- Whole-body cryopreservation messaging invites regulatory scrutiny and distracts from organ preservation execution.
What makes UntilLabs unique
- Founders Fund, Lux, and Field backed Until Labs' 2025 $58M Series A.
- Until's 2026 site says it has raised $100M+ and is hiring.
- Its patent for reversible cryopreservation covers perfusion, pressure, and volumetric rewarming.
Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?
Benefits
- Health Insurance
- Dental Insurance
- Vision Insurance
- Flexible Work Hours
- Paid Holidays
- 401(k) Retirement Plan
- Health Savings Account/Flexible Spending Account
- Commuter Benefits
- Professional Development Budget