Employment Counsel
San Mateo · 9+ years experience · Full-time · Hybrid · Posted Oct 16, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 9+ years experience
- Employment
- Full-time
- Workplace
- Hybrid
- Location
- San Mateo
About Fireworks AI
- Fireworks is the platform for specialized intelligence, enabling companies to build, train, and serve AI models tailored to their own data, workflows, and products. Founded by the team behind PyTorch and backed by AMD, Atreides, Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, and TCV, Fireworks powers production AI with hundreds of state-of-the-art open models across text, image, embedding, audio, and multimodal workloads. Today, Fireworks is a Series D company valued at $17.5 billion, bringing together an ambitious, collaborative team that's building the future of enterprise AI.
About the role
- As Employment Counsel, you will be a foundational member of the legal team, owning employment and labor matters for a rapidly scaling company. You will serve as the primary legal partner for the People and HR organization, building scalable policies and processes for a growing workforce.
Responsibilities
- Advise on the full range of employment and labor matters including hiring, terminations, classifications, leaves, accommodations, investigations, and policy.
- Partner closely with HR and People Operations as a trusted, day-to-day legal advisor.
- Counsel on employee equity and compensation considerations.
- Build scalable employment policies, templates, and processes suited to a rapidly growing, multi-state workforce.
- Support international expansion and advise on cross-border employment and global labor law compliance.
- Manage employment-related disputes and coordinate specialist outside counsel where needed.
- Keep the company ahead of compliance obligations related to fast headcount growth.
Requirements
- 9+ years of in-house employment and labor law experience.
- JD and membership in at least one US state bar.
- Prior startup experience, ideally in a hypergrowth environment.
- Track record of close collaboration and strong partnership with HR and People Operations teams.
- Familiarity with employee equity and compensation considerations.
- Experience supporting international expansion and navigating global employment laws.
- Pragmatic, build-from-scratch mindset and the judgment to balance risk with business velocity.
- AI-forward, builder’s mindset with a demonstrated ability to use AI tools to streamline workflows.
Benefits
- Meaningful equity
- Competitive salary
- Comprehensive benefits package
Skills
- Labor Law
- AI Tools
