Legal Counsel

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

• Full-time
• Independent Group Functions Context & mandate Echelon is a Saudi-born, sovereign technology company that brings leading global AI technologies to the Kingdom, deploys them with its own forward deployed engineering organisation, compounds partner technology into Echelon IP and, over time, productises Saudi-developed capability.
  
  

Echelon contracts continuously: technology partners on structural, programme and referral agreements, MOUs and term sheets with defence and energy technology companies, customer Scopes of Work delivered by Frontier, and a share plan that reaches every employee.

This is a seat for a qualified lawyer, early in their career, who would rather be the only counsel in the room than one of twenty. The legal function grows next year; you will have shaped how it works before it does.

The role: from first draft to signature

You will run the day-to-day legal work of the group, with the General Counsel and external counsel on the matters that need them. Under the Delegation of Authority the Managing Director is the only signatory, so the quality of what reaches his desk is the whole of the job.

• Partner & commercial contracting: Carry NDAs, MOUs, term sheets, referral and revenue-share agreements and Scopes of Work from first draft to signature, holding Echelon’s positions on exclusivity, margin protection and first right of refusal for Frontier.
• Templates & playbooks: Build the recurring instruments, from the partner referral agreement to the employment contract, so most files close on standard paper.
• Corporate housekeeping: Keep resolutions, registers, the shareholders’ agreement and share plan documentation current for the holding company and the Saudi operating company, with the GNRC.
• Employment & regulatory: Cover contracts, policies and Saudi labour-law compliance with the People function, and the regulatory perimeter around data, licensing and clearance-bound activity.
• Intellectual property: Protect engineering IP held at group level, partner IP boundaries in every deployment, and Echelon-developed capability as it is productised.
  
  

Where we align

Legal first

• Qualified: A law degree and admission to practice are required.
• Saudi practice: Practice in Saudi Arabia or substantial Saudi exposure, in technology, commercial or corporate work.
• Drafting: Fluent legal drafting in English; Arabic a strong advantage.
  
  

Our values

• Customer first: You measure your work by customer outcomes, and prioritise accordingly.
• Ownership mentality: You own outcomes end to end. When something breaks or stalls, you treat it as yours to fix.
• Clear communicator: You explain complex things simply, to every audience, and make the value of your work visible.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: You make progress with incomplete information, and you enjoy solving problems where there is no structure yet.
• Long-term builder: You invest in Echelon’s long-term success, bringing what you learn back into our strategy and operations.
  
  

The seat

• Reports to: General Counsel
• Location: Riyadh
• Package: A base salary with housing, transport and education allowances, medical cover, and equity through the employee equity programme. Terms are shared at offer stage.
  
  

How we work

You read fast, draft clean and mark uncertainty rather than inventing a position. You find contracts interesting because of what they make possible, not because of what they prevent.

• Curiosity: You want to understand the deal before you paper it: where the value sits, what the partner actually wants, what the technology does.
• Speed of learning: An unfamiliar instrument, such as a share plan or a defence MOU, comes back from you as a workable draft, not a list of questions.
• Ownership & pace: A file is yours from first draft to signature. You turn a term sheet in days and keep the corporate record current without being asked.
• Judgement: Pragmatic on commercial points, immovable on the ones that matter. You escalate the right things and explain why in three sentences.
• Where you are: What you have closed counts for more than how many years you have been closing.