Associate General Counsel

We are building AI to simulate the world through merging art and science.

We believe that world models are at the frontier of progress in artificial intelligence. Language models alone won’t solve the world’s hardest problems – robotics, disease, scientific discovery. Real progress requires models that experience the world and learn from their mistakes, the same way that humans do. And this kind of trial and error can be massively accelerated when done in simulation, rather than in the real world.

World models offer the most clear path to general-purpose simulation, changing how stories are told, how scientific progress is made and how the next frontiers of humanity are reached.

Our team consists of creative, open minded, caring and ambitious people who are determined to change the world. We aspire to continuously build impossible things and our ability to do so relies on building an incredible team. If you are driven to do the same, we'd love to hear from you.

*Open to hiring remote across the US — we also have offices in NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle

We are looking to hire an Associate General Counsel to own corporate, employment, and privacy at Runway, and to serve as a senior generalist partner to the General Counsel on whatever else the business sends our way.

We are optimizing for judgment and breadth over subject matter expertise. The ideal candidate has run the legal function at a startup, or multiple functions within legal, where the job was getting to a sound answer quickly with imperfect facts and little precedent, and knowing which questions warranted outside counsel and which needed answering that afternoon. Deep experience in one or more of corporate, employment, or privacy is a plus, as is a proven track record of successfully expanding beyond the domain where you started.

You'll collaborate closely with the Executive, People, Finance, and Security teams, among others. The role spans the highest-leverage strategic work at the company and the execution that support staff would handle elsewhere, often on the same day. This is currently an individual contributor role, and reports directly to the General Counsel.

The scope is wide, it will keep moving, and no two days will be the same.

What you’ll do

• Own Runway's corporate governance and entity work day-to-day, including Board and stockholder consents, minutes, equity plan administration, and subsidiary formation/management

• Quarterback major corporate transactions, including equity financings and M&A - managing timelines, coordinating cross-functional workstreams, and overseeing outside counsel

• Own employment legal end-to-end: hiring and separations, classification, EOR and contractor arrangements, policies, investigations, and cross-border employment questions as we grow outside the US

• Run point on privacy at Runway, including counseling the Marketing team, drafting and maintaining our privacy policies and related documentation, sharing responsibility for privacy governance in partnership with our Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) team, and building the training the company needs as it grows

• Serve as the in-house resource other legal team members turn to when their commercial, product, or policy work runs into a hard privacy question

• Build, improve, document, and execute repeatable processes across all three areas, so our infrastructure scales with the company rather than trailing behind it; while being careful to avoid too much process for a company of our size and scale

• Decide what stays in-house and what goes out, and manage outside counsel, scope, and spend accordingly

• Serve as a thought partner to the Executive Team and to the rest of Legal, giving clear recommendations and proposing a path forward rather than lists of considerations

• Dive into the technical aspects of the product and industry to learn it inside and out, to inform your advice to the business

• Support the team across other legal domains as our lean team requires

What you’ll need

• A J.D. and admission in good standing with at least one state bar

• 7+ years of legal experience, including meaningful time in-house at a high-growth startup

• Experience running a small legal team or function, where you owned the decision rather than recommending it to someone more senior

• Demonstrated breadth - you have been the accountable lawyer in at least two of corporate, employment, and privacy, and can point to a domain you picked up from scratch and handled well

• Sound judgment under ambiguity, and confidence to figure it out and make the call

• Strong business acumen and creative problem solving skills

• A deep sense of ownership, whether you're advising the CEO on a bleeding-edge governance question or personally chasing down approvals for Board consents

• The capacity to think big; a growth mindset that prioritizes continuous improvement and scales with the business; and a bias for action

• Enthusiasm for generative AI and curiosity about the legal and regulatory landscape shaping a new and important industry

• Prior specialization in corporate, employment, and/or privacy is a plus, as is experience with entities and employment outside the US

Runway strives to recruit and retain exceptional talent from diverse backgrounds while ensuring pay equity for our team. Our salary ranges are based on competitive market rates for our size, stage and industry, and salary is just one part of the overall compensation package we provide.

There are many factors that go into salary determinations, including relevant experience, skill level and qualifications assessed during the interview process, and maintaining internal equity with peers on the team. The range shared below is a general expectation for the function as posted, but we are also open to considering candidates who may be more or less experienced than outlined in the job description. In this case, we will communicate any updates in the expected salary range.

Lastly, the provided range is the expected salary for candidates in the U.S. Outside of those regions, there may be a change in the range, which again, will be communicated to candidates.

Working at Runway

Great things come from great teams. We’d love to hear from you.

We’re committed to creating a space where our employees can bring their full selves to work and have equal opportunity to succeed. So regardless of race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, origin, ability, age, veteran status, if joining this mission speaks to you, we encourage you to apply.

More about Runway

• Universal World Simulator

• GWM-1

• Gen-4.5

• General World Models

• Robotics SDK

• Conversational Real-time Agents

• Runway Studios

We're excited to be recognized as a best place to work:

Crain's | InHerSight | BuiltIn NYC | INC