Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. TiDB, powered by PingCAP, is a global player in the massive database market, focusing on innovative solutions for businesses. They are seeking a Legal Director to architect and operationalize the company’s global legal infrastructure, providing high-level commercial guidance and building scalable legal programs aligned with the company’s growth and future public-company readiness.
Responsibilities
- Lead negotiations for high-value, complex, or escalated global SaaS and infrastructure agreements (>$1M)
- Negotiate and structure hyperscaler agreements (AWS, Azure, GCP), cloud marketplace listings, strategic partnerships, and open-core monetization models
- As the senior legal leader supporting global business, provide commercial contracting support for matters requiring senior-level legal judgment—including escalated, non-standard, or cross-border deals
- Design contracting systems, including templates, playbooks, fallback logic, and automated workflows that reduce the need for manual review for standard agreements
- Manage and harmonize simultaneous multi-region compliance obligations (GDPR, CCPA and other data privacy regulations), including AI governance, cloud-native regulations, and distributed data models
- Build scalable global governance frameworks, compliance programs, and cross-border data protection mechanisms
- Architect the global legal operating model, including AI-enabled contract automation, self-service tooling, and scalable workflow processes
- Contribute to TiDB’s long-term IPO-readiness initiatives, helping mature governance, documentation, compliance controls, and legal systems aligned with public-company standards
- Partner with Finance, HR, Product, Sales, Security, and Engineering on cross-functional processes and internal control frameworks
- Co-design data product terms, implement legal safeguards within product workflows, and ensure compliance with open-source licensing and hybrid cloud/on-premise deployment models
- Support new business models (consumption-based pricing, distributed systems, cloud-native GTM motions)
- Operate as the senior legal stakeholder for global business, collaborating closely with Asia-based R&D and global commercial leadership
- Mentor emerging legal and operational partners; support a “follow-the-sun” legal operations model
- Provide competitive intelligence and strategic legal insights to executive leadership
- Resolve high-severity, multi-jurisdictional incidents with speed and precision
- Build early-warning systems, escalation processes, and global incident-response frameworks
- Perform additional duties and responsibilities as required to support the needs of the business
Skills
- 10+ years of progressive legal experience in SaaS, cloud infrastructure, or enterprise technology
- Proven expertise negotiating complex enterprise agreements, hyperscaler contracts, and open-core licensing structures
- Proven experience of managing legal teams in international IT companies
- Strong multi-region compliance experience (U.S., EMEA, APAC)
- Fluency in cloud economics, distributed systems, and consumption-based GTM models
- Demonstrated ability to implement legal automation, AI tools, and operational scaling
- Experience partnering with Product, Engineering, and Commercial leadership
- Crisis and incident management experience across jurisdictions
- Ability to operate independently as the senior-most regional legal leader
- Active U.S. bar membership
Benefits
- TiDB's Bonus and Equity Plan
- Sales Compensation Plan if it is a sales role
- Health insurance
- Flexible vacation time
- Paid holidays
- Parental leave
Company Overview
Founded in 2015, TiDB was born from the vision of three talented software engineers who set out to build a database system that would be more scalable and reliable than MySQL, while retaining its rich ecosystem of tools and frameworks. It was founded in 2015, and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, USA, with a workforce of 501-1000 employees. Its website is https://pingcap.com.