Corporate Legal Director (R6494)

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai . Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn , X , Instagram , and YouTube .
Job Description:
We are seeking a Director, Legal to provide hands-on legal leadership across four core areas: (i) product counseling; (ii) marketing, AI governance and privacy; (iii) public-company readiness, including building the technology and software development compliance processes and policies, such as open source software, AI and other authorized usage policies; and (iv) general corporate project work, including helping manage employment matters and litigation. The goal is to help the business move at the speed of the mission while managing risk in a highly regulated environment. This is a builder’s role in one of the fastest-moving defense technology companies in the world. You will be a primary legal partner to the teams that build, ship and sell Hivemind and Shield AI’s other software, and to People Experience (PX), Marketing and IT. You will stand up the programs, policies and playbooks that let those teams launch products, run campaigns, adopt AI, and you will be accountable for making Legal an enabler of rapid development and growth. Three qualities are non-negotiable:

• Executive and external credibility. You must have the presence, judgment and technical fluency to advise C-suite and executive leaders directly, and to represent Shield AI with confidence to partners, customers and outside counsel on AI, software, data and product questions.
• Action orientation under shifting priorities. You must be able to run many projects and workflows at once, move quickly on urgent requests, re-prioritize without losing track of anything, and see matters through from intake to completion. In Shield AI’s words: be rigorous and go fast.
• Practical, needs-driven program building. You must understand what product, engineering, marketing and PX teams actually need, and then proactively build scalable processes, policies and self-serve guidance that meet those needs, while doing what honor dictates when the answer is hard.

The role is on-site at one of the Shield AI offices listed above. You will report to the Senior Director, Legal, who leads legal support for PX, Marketing, IT and many aspects of the Hivemind software business, including partnerships. You will work closely with the Chief Legal Officer and the broader Legal and Security teams, with opportunities to mentor attorneys and legal professionals, and manage outside counsel as the business expands.

What You'll Do:

Product counseling
• Serve as a primary legal partner to Product, Engineering, Program Management, Customer Success, Information Security and Business Development across the full product lifecycle for Hivemind and Shield AI’s other software offerings, from feature design and data use through go-to-market and customer-facing terms.
• Advise on legal and regulatory issues specific to AI, autonomy, data use, software and dual-use technology, including IP ownership, training data and model rights, third-party and foundation-model use, output ownership, and how commercial IP terms interact with government data rights.
• Structure, draft and negotiate software license agreements, SDK and developer terms, end user license agreements and partner agreements that support Hivemind’s growing ecosystem, including OEM and platform integration, reseller and aggregator, joint development, technology licensing and data-sharing arrangements.
• Build and run scalable product counsel processes, including feature and launch reviews, legal intake, playbooks, standard positions and contractual fallbacks, and self-serve guidance that lets Sales, Product and Customer Success resolve common questions without legal escalation.
• Partner with Trade Compliance on export classification and controls (ITAR/EAR) at the point of product decision, and with Government Contracts on product licensing terms, DFARS data rights, cybersecurity requirements and flow-downs.
• Coordinate with IP counsel on invention disclosures, patent and trade secret protection, freedom-to-operate questions, and protecting Shield AI’s most sensitive technology in commercial and government-facing deals.
  Marketing, AI governance and privacy
• Provide fast, practical legal review of marketing and communications activities, including campaigns, product claims, press releases, social media, trade shows and events, sponsorships, contests and promotions, and customer and partner case studies.
• Partner with Marketing, Communications, Security and Trade Compliance so that public content about government customers, programs and technical capabilities is cleared appropriately, and build an efficient, AI-assisted marketing review process that scales with the business.
• Help lead Shield AI’s AI governance program, including supporting the AI Governance committee, maintaining the AI use-case risk rubric and inventory, and developing policies, standards and controls for both AI features in our products and the AI tools our teammates use internally.
• Translate evolving AI frameworks into practical requirements, including the EU AI Act, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, U.S. federal and state AI laws, and U.S. Department of Defense policy on responsible AI and autonomy in weapon systems.
• Advise IT, Security and enterprise teams on AI vendor and model-provider agreements, AI tool procurement, data processing terms and agentic AI use cases.
• Develop and run key parts of the privacy program, including privacy-by-design reviews, privacy notices, data processing agreements, cross-border data transfers, data mapping and data subject requests, under GDPR/UK GDPR, CCPA/CPRA and the laws of other countries where Shield AI operates.
• Partner with PX and IT on employee and candidate data, data sensitivity labeling and data governance across enterprise systems, and develop standard responses to recurring customer AI, privacy and security questionnaires.
  Technology and company compliance programs
• Help prepare the Legal team and the business for larger company maturity and scrutiny by designing, documenting and putting into practice the technology and software development policies, processes and controls a public company is expected to have.
• Build and scale Shield AI’s open source software compliance program, including policy, intake and approval workflows, license review (e.g., GPL, LGPL, AGPL, Apache, MIT), software bill of materials (SBOM) and software composition analysis tooling with Engineering and Security, remediation, and an outbound contribution policy.
• Develop, roll out and maintain AI policies and authorized and acceptable use policies, including internal AI use, IT and data use, and customer-facing acceptable use terms for Hivemind and other software products, including terms governing customers’ AI and agentic systems.
• Partner with Finance, Internal Audit, IT and Security to provide legal input on controls and certifications that support public-company and customer requirements (e.g., SOX IT general controls, ISO 27001, CMMC), and set up policy governance, including owners, review cadence, attestations and training.