Legal Operations Lead

Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine founded in December 2022 and growing rapidly as one of the world’s leading AI platforms. Perplexity has raised over $1B in venture investment from some of the world’s most visionary and successful leaders, including Elad Gil, Daniel Gross, Jeff Bezos, Accel, IVP, NEA, NVIDIA, Samsung, and many more. Our objective is to build accurate, trustworthy AI that powers decision-making for people and assistive AI wherever decisions are being made. Throughout human history, change and innovation have always been driven by curious people. Today, curious people use Perplexity to answer more than 780 million queries every month–a number that’s growing rapidly for one simple reason: everyone can be curious. 

Perplexity is looking for a dynamic and innovative attorney to join our small team to help advance the business, improve the products we’re building, and revolutionize the way people search and interact with the internet. This unique role offers significant responsibility to apply and strengthen your legal experience and offers growth potential in other areas of an in-house practice group.

About the Opportunity:

We seek an experienced legal operations lead to drive operational excellence across our legal team and support our ambitious growth trajectory within our rapidly growing AI technology company. This unique role will report to the Head of Legal & Operations and partner on strategic planning, management of the Legal team's outside counsel billing, vendor relationships, and program/project management. We're seeking a sharp, innovative legal operations professional who combines strong business judgment with practical problem-solving abilities, deep understanding of high-growth startup environments, and the ability to combine traditional legal operations expertise with business risk assessment. You'll handle hands-on operational work while building scalable processes and establishing foundational systems that will scale with our growth. Success requires someone who is inquisitive, has entrepreneurial drive, and the agility to thrive in our fast-paced environment while shaping the legal operations function from the ground up at a cutting-edge AI technology company.

Responsibilities:

• Oversee relationships with legal vendors, including law firms and technology providers

• Develop self-service capabilities, playbooks, and automated processes to enhance internal efficiency

• Support integrations between legal tools and business systems (sales, procurement, finance) to streamline operations

• Manage legal team data analytics programs and create comprehensive reporting for business review cycles

• Implement effective knowledge management strategies to ensure critical legal information and precedents are organized and accessible

• Oversee contract management operations, including template development, workflow optimization, document lifecycle management and signature process

• Prepare standard NDAs and routine contracts, escalating to attorneys when necessary

• Partner cross-functionally with internal teams to ensure seamless alignment and support for legal operations and initiatives

What you’ll bring:

• At least 7+ years of law firm and/or in-house legal operations experience

• Demonstrated expertise in strategic planning, and managing vendor relationships with a proven track record of building new or improving existing programs and processes

• Experience with matter management and e-billing platforms (e.g., Brightflag, SimpleLegal) and deep understanding of legal department operations, technologies, and processes

• Demonstrated interest in artificial intelligence solutions application in work settings with natural curiosity, technological savvy, and willingness to learn and operate new tools and systems

• Strategic thinking around legal resource deployment with strong analytical and problem-solving skills, capable of seeing the bigger picture while paying attention to detail

• Ability to thrive in dynamic, fast-paced environments where no task is too big or too small

• Independent and strategic thought combined with excellent team player qualities and willingness to take on additional responsibilities

• Strong commitment to continuous improvement and always looking for ways to make things better, faster, or more efficient

Our cash compensation range for this role is $120,000 - $190,000.

 Equity: In addition to the base salary, equity may be part of the total compensation package.
Benefits: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents. Includes a 401(k) plan.