Senior Corporate Counsel, Commercial

Summary

Yelp is seeking an exceptional commercial attorney eager to collaborate across teams to bring together deals that move our business forward. You will join our tight-knit legal team in a role that will shape complex commercial structures and drive strategic partnerships in pursuit of Yelp’s mission to connect millions of people with great local businesses. Demonstrated expertise in negotiating privacy agreements is a must.

 

This role serves primarily as a critical strategic business partner who will lead complex, high-stakes technology and business development negotiations at the highest levels. We are looking for a commercially-minded leader who thrives in ambiguity, understands the technical intricacies of the digital landscape, takes responsibility for projects from inception to end, and possesses the drive to turn an inch of direction into a mile of solid results. A sense of humor helps too! This role will also have opportunities to work in other legal areas. Although Yelp is a publicly traded company with thousands of employees, the company prides itself on maintaining a startup culture and feel which our small legal team reflects. We are looking for someone with impressive legal experience who shares our commitment to providing innovative solutions.

 

We welcome a partner eager to learn from, and build on, the successful foundation our Business Development and Legal teams have built over the past 16 years, but you must be entirely comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment without structured oversight. You will integrate seamlessly with our Legal and Business Development teams and rely on your judgment to keep deals moving forward safely, without the need for step-by-step instructions.

 

We’d love to have you apply, even if you don’t feel you meet every single requirement in this posting. At Yelp, we’re looking for great people, not just those who simply check off all the boxes. This is a full-time remote role based in the United States.

What you'll do:

• Execute Complex Deals: Independently draft and negotiate enterprise-level business development and commercial contracts at the highest levels, including SaaS subscriptions, API and data feed integrations, software development agreements, and content licenses, with a heavy focus on the privacy and data-protection issues that surface whenever personal information changes hands.
• Own the Privacy Dimension of Every Deal: Serve as the key person who identifies, weighs and independently resolves privacy and personal-data issues buried inside complex commercial and business development agreements, how data is collected, shared, retained, and monetized on the outbound, revenue-generating side of the business. You will translate complex regulatory obligations into concrete contract terms, data-flow structures, and risk positions that let deals close without creating downstream exposure.
• Pioneer AI & Data Licensing: Architect and negotiate novel AI licensing agreements, specifically managing the flow, security, and control of data into LLMs and RAG frameworks, structuring intricate deals where there is no template to follow, including deals that govern how data feeds into LLMs and RAG frameworks. This is frontier work: you will build the terms rather than borrow them, structuring intricate arrangements the market hasn’t standardized yet.
• Provide Strategic Commercial Counsel: Apply deep commercial expertise (including a strong grasp of revenue models, pricing structures, and overall business strategy) to align legal solutions with Yelp’s broader business goals.
• Enable Business Growth (Master Risk-Reward): Advance company objectives by actively balancing speed with risk. You understand that legal work is about managing risk rather than eliminating it. You know which terms to hold, which to trade, and how to explain the difference to an account executive or a C-suite executive to make practical recommendations that keep deals moving safely while collaborating with your technical and business counterparts.
• Proactive Deal Management: Demonstrate a strong, self-managing drive to take responsibility. When given a brief, three-sentence summary of a potential deal, you do not wait passively for more information; you proactively research the counterparty, anticipate issues, and take action yourself to move the project forward.
• Ownership. You consistently demonstrate high-level accountability and prioritize the success of the business. Rather than waiting for ideal conditions or for someone else to clear the way, you take resourceful action to overcome obstacles. You invest deeply in your work and naturally elevate your contributions to meet whatever the situation requires.
• Cross Functional Partnerships: Interact constantly with other departments to execute agreements and advance business development. You must collaborate seamlessly with Product, Finance, Security, and Engineering to truly understand how our products work and intelligently allocate risk. A proven track record of cross-functional collaboration is essential to success in this role.

What it takes to succeed:

• Qualifications: Juris Doctor degree and state bar membership in good standing
• Experience: 8+ years of experience as an attorney (In-house counsel experience is a big plus) with a proven track record in complex technology transactions and business development at a very high level. 
• Deep, Applied Privacy Expertise: Years of hands-on experience with the privacy and data-protection regimes that govern how personal information is collected, shared, and monetized, including US State privacy law regimes, TCPA, CIPA, CAN-SPAM, HIPAA, and PCI compliance. What matters is not textbook familiarity but applied fluency: you understand how these frameworks actually operate inside live products and deals, how privacy exposure arises on the outbound, revenue-generating side of the business (not just in procurement), and how it winds its way through contract structure, data flows, and negotiated terms. This is the hardest and least teachable part of the job, and it is the part that keeps us up at night.
• Additional Subject Matter Expertise: Extensive knowledge of SaaS contract law and IP law, and a strong command of the broader regulatory landscape as it applies to commercial and business development work.
• Enough Technical Literacy to Spot the Risk: A working, practical grasp of how data actually moves, APIs, data feeds, databases, and the systems that pass personal information between parties, sufficient to recognize where privacy and security exposure lives in a deal and to ask the right questions. You do not need to be an engineer or arrive fluent in our stack or AI-specific architecture; that layer can be picked up quickly on the job.
• True Negotiation Skills (Not Just Review): A proven track record of actively negotiating complex agreements, not merely reviewing and redlining them. You must be able to think strategically about give-and-take, develop creative fallback positions, and independently resolve issues without escalating to outside counsel.
• Work Well With Others: Strong work ethic, with a team player mentality and experience successfully working cross-functionally with multiple teams of stakeholders.
• Efficiency and Practical Risk Balancing: The ability to expertly balance speed with risk. You understand that hesitation or over-indexing on perfection can kill deals; you must know when 90% certainty is good enough to move the business forward safely.
• Intense Ownership: High-level accountability without the ego. You care deeply about not letting down the team or Yelp’s user base of businesses and consumers, take pride in your work, and are willing to step outside of your direct job description to do whatever it takes to make Yelp better for everyone.
• Genuine Passion for the Field: A true legal and technology “nerd" who actively follows tech and legal issues (such as emerging AI trends and privacy shifts) because you love it, not just because you have to.

What you'll get:

• Effective your first day: Full medical, vision, and dental 
• 15 days PTO (accrual begins on date of hire and increases with 2+ years of tenure thereafter), 12 paid holidays, plus one floating holiday
• Up to 14 weeks of parental leave
• Monthly wellness subsidy
• Work from home reimbursement
• Flexible spending account
• 401(k) retirement savings plan
• Employee stock purchase plan
• Compensation range for this position is $153,000 - $287,000 annually. You may also be offered a bonus, Restricted Stock Units, and benefits.

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