General Counsel

Automata is transforming the way labs work with open, integrated automation. Our mission is to unlock the potential of labs and the potential of the people who work in them. At Automata, we're on a mission to transform how scientists work by making automation accessible to every lab in the world. We believe that by giving labs the power to automate, we can unlock discoveries that will shape the future of life sciences—from diagnostics and drug discovery to synthetic biology. But we’re more than just a company disrupting the industry—we're a team of innovators, problem-solvers, and creators passionate about empowering scientists. Our LINQ platform combines hardware and software to streamline workflows, making lab automation fast, flexible, and affordable. This means our customers can focus on groundbreaking research, while we take care of the rest.

Why Work at Automata?

• Impact: Your work will directly contribute to advancements in science and medicine, supporting labs around the globe as they push boundaries in research and innovation.
• Innovation: You’ll be part of a team solving complex problems, using cutting‑edge technology.
• Growth: We invest in our people. Whether through hands‑on experience, professional development, or collaborative projects, you’ll grow both professionally and personally.

What we're looking for…

The General Counsel is responsible for establishing, owning and continuously improving Automata’s legal framework, while providing strategic, hands‑on in‑house legal leadership to the Management Team. Reporting to the CFO, you will bring stage‑appropriate structure to the business while maintaining the pace of growth and set Automata up for future fundraises with robust and reliable processes. A defining feature of this role is working closely with Automata’s AI legal assistant, which handles a significant volume of routine legal work, including NDA triage, contract review, compliance monitoring, canned response generation, and legal risk assessment. The General Counsel’s focus is therefore heavily weighted towards strategic legal judgment, complex negotiations, governance, and oversight of the AI‑assisted legal function. The ability to work fluidly alongside AI tooling, set policy guardrails, and know when to intervene versus delegate is as important as deep legal expertise. A risk‑based, pragmatic approach is essential.

What You’ll Do

• Commercial: Lead major commercial negotiations and complex transactions, drawing on the AI Assistant’s first‑pass contract analysis to focus human attention where it matters most. Collaborate with Sales, Operations and Procurement to ensure legal contracts are fit for purpose, establishing and maintaining master templates that Claude Legal uses as its review baseline. Appoint and oversee external legal counsel, as aligned with the CFO, for strategic, complex or high‑value matters that exceed internal capacity or require specialist expertise. Understand the dynamics of the Cap Table and actively support the CEO, CFO and Board on fundraising decisions. Implement legal controls into key commercial systems and processes.
• Corporate Governance & Compliance: Own and maintain Automata's business‑wide risk register, working with the leadership team to identify, scope and manage key risks — supported by the AI Assistant's assessment function. Set and maintain Automata's AI use policy for legal functions, including appropriate human oversight requirements and data handling standards. Guide on regulatory and compliance matters across jurisdictions (UK, EU, and US), drawing on the AI Assistant for first‑line compliance monitoring. Lead horizon scanning for regulatory and legal change, keeping the business proactively informed of incoming legislation and regulation across UK, EU and US jurisdictions that could affect Automata's operations, products or commercial model. Own the preparation of Board resolutions, working with external legal counsel as required. Take full ownership of and lead Automata's Company Secretarial support – working with external counsel as needed to support Operations on time, in full and through to completion.
• AI‑Assisted Legal Operations: Direct the design and maintenance of AI‑assisted workflows — including contract review playbooks, NDA triage thresholds, canned response templates, and risk assessment criteria — ensuring they reflect Automata's current legal positions and risk appetite; familiarity with how these tools operate is essential, but hands‑on configuration will be supported by an appropriate legal ops resource. Set and maintain escalation rules that determine when the AI Assistant surfaces matters for human review, and be the primary escalation point for flagged issues. Review and approve outputs on high‑value or novel matters before they are acted upon by the business. Continuously refine the AI‑assisted legal function as Automata's business evolves, working with the CFO and Chief of Staff to identify new workflows to automate or streamline. Maintain a clear audit trail of AI‑assisted legal decisions, ensuring accountability and the ability to reconstruct reasoning when required.
• General: Help manage investment stages, including shareholder agreements and share schemes. Provide support to the HR team on employment‑related legal matters. Own IP strategy, including brand protection, trade mark registration and renewals, domain management and the IP schedule. This extends beyond trade marks to encompass the full breadth of how Automata's brand and IP are protected. Own and manage the legal budget, including external counsel spend and AI legal tooling costs. Support future fundraisers and debt financing requirements. Build and develop lean, high‑performance internal legal processes that leverage AI tooling to punch above its weight as Automata scales.

What You Bring

• Qualified solicitor or barrister (England & Wales) with 10+ years' post‑qualification experience, including in‑house general counsel experience. US qualified lawyer or US legal practice experience would be useful, given Automata's US expansion.
• Proven experience working in or alongside fast‑growth, technology‑driven environments — you understand that speed and pragmatism are competitive advantages.
• Familiarity with AI‑assisted legal tools and legal tech platforms is essential. You are comfortable reviewing AI outputs critically, setting appropriate guardrails, and knowing when human judgment must override; deep hands‑on configuration experience is not required, but a genuine willingness to upskill rapidly and get stuck in is.
• Strong commercial instincts: you understand how legal issues impact the organisation and proactively address challenges before they become problems.
• Exceptional communication skills — able to translate complex legal positions into clear guidance for non‑legal stakeholders at speed.
• Confidence to represent Automata in negotiations and in front of the Board, investors and regulators.
• Excellent stakeholder management across a fast‑moving, cross‑functional leadership team, highly organised and able to manage multiple workstreams at once.

What Makes You Stand Out

• Experience with fundraising, M&A or corporate finance transactions.
• Familiarity with AI governance frameworks and emerging regulation (EU AI Act, UK AI regulatory approach).
• Familiarity with patent law and prosecution processes.

Values

• Action over Inaction – be a completer of work, pushing actions through to resolution and sign‑off, documenting outcomes clearly.
• Pace – complete things on time and cut through when something is taking too long. Use AI tooling to accelerate, not to defer.
• Be Your Best – actively seek out feedback and proactively ask for advice and support in your development areas.
• Collaborate to Elevate – work with the CFO, CEO, Chief of Staff and other stakeholders to identify priority areas, sharing issues and problems with transparency and openness.

A Note on Working with the AI Assistant

Automata’s AI legal assistant is capable of handling NDA triage, contract review against playbooks, compliance checking, legal risk assessment, canned responses to routine legal enquiries, and meeting briefings. The General Counsel is responsible for configuring and overseeing this capability — not replacing it. The most effective General Counsels in this environment will be those who use the AI Assistant to dramatically expand capacity on routine work, while reserving their own time and judgment for matters that are genuinely novel, high‑stakes, or relationship‑dependent. We are looking for someone who embraces this model and helps Automata build a best‑in‑class AI‑augmented legal function.

We are an equal‑opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Discrimination of any kind based on race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status is strictly prohibited.