Website:
anthriq.com
Job details:
About The Role
Anthriq designs silicon for systems in defence, medical, telecom, and automotive. Almost all of our value sits in intellectual property and increasingly in the domestic and international partners, vendors and consultants we work with to commercialise it.
As that partner network has grown, so has the sophistication of the legal work behind it. Our agreements interact with one another: what we commit to in a tooling licence shapes how we staff a project, and what we promise one design partner shapes what we can license to the next. Reading those interactions well — and structuring deals so they stay open rather than closed — is genuine strategic work, and it needs someone holding the whole picture.
We're hiring our first in-house Counsel to own that: commercial contracting, IP protection, corporate and financing support, internal policy, information security governance and the occasional dispute. You won't have a team. You will have real budget for external partners and specialist firms, and you'll be expected to scope, brief and drive them rather than forward emails. This seat is the foundation for the senior legal leadership role as the company grows.
Responsibilities
Core of the role
- Contracting. Draft, negotiate and close our contract mix across Indian and international counterparties — NDAs, commercial and design-partner agreements, IP and tooling licences, vendor and services contracts, distribution, consultancy and employment documents. Spot where one agreement constrains what we can do under another, and propose commercial fixes.
- Templates and playbooks. Build the standard forms and fallback positions that let routine deals move without you in the room.
- Contract lifecycle. Keep a reliable record of what's in force and track the dates that carry consequence — expiries, renewals, notice periods, restrictive-covenant tails. Run the document discipline that makes legal diligence a non-event.
- IP portfolio. Support the IP Portfolio function. Brief and manage external patent and trademark counsel on filings, prosecution and renewals. Work with R&D to harvest IPs early, and ensure IP from employees and contractors vests cleanly.
- Policy. Maintain our internal legal, HR and information-security policies, and drive real adoption.
- Export control & defence-sector compliance. Hold day-to-day export-control awareness (US EAR/ITAR on foreign-origin IP and EDA tooling; India's SCOMET/DGFT) and the foreign-investment and end-use sensitivities that come with defence work; scope and brief specialists for filings, classifications and clearances.
- Insurance. Own procurement and renewal of the company's cover — D&O, professional indemnity, product and commercial liability — and keep it aligned with the liability and indemnity positions taken in our contracts.
With external support
- Fundraise and corporate. Be the internal point of contact for fundraise and secondaries — diligence, data room, transaction documents — and ensure filings and post-closing compliance, including FEMA/RBI reporting on foreign investment and cross-border remittances, land on time via our CS and accounting functions.
- IP and data protection. With engineering and IT, keep the safeguards around confidential design material working, and own the response playbook if something goes wrong.
- Disputes. Handle notices and routine employment or vendor matters directly; bring in litigators where escalation is warranted.
Qualifications
- LL.B. or equivalent, enrolled with a Bar Council in India.
- 4–6 years post-qualification experience, with a meaningful in-house component. Law firm training followed by in-house work at a technology, product or hardware company is the strongest fit.
- End-to-end ownership of commercial contracting — negotiation and closure, not just review — across a varied mix and more than one jurisdiction.
- Working knowledge of technology and IP transactions: licensing structures, field-of-use and scope, ownership and improvements, indemnities, liability.
- Sound grounding in Indian contract, company, employment, IP and data protection law, plus the judgement to know when to bring in a specialist.
- Comfortable as a single-handed legal function: able to prioritise, build process where none exists, and give a clear answer under time pressure.
- Precise drafting, and the ability to explain risk to non-lawyers in terms they can act on.
- Cross-border commercial awareness: withholding-tax/TDS and gross-up mechanics, treaty (DTAA) relief, and GST / reverse-charge on imported services and tooling — enough to catch a payment clause that quietly shifts a vendor's tax burden onto us. Working familiarity with FEMA/RBI forex and inbound-investment rules.
- Export-control awareness for semiconductor or defence end-use.
Preferred Skills
Not prerequisites — each simply strengthens an application:
- Technical fluency — engineering or science background, or exposure to semiconductors, embedded systems or EDA tooling.
- IP prosecution experience with the Indian Patent Office and/or USPTO.
- Litigation or arbitration exposure, particularly IP or commercial disputes.
- Venture financing experience from the company side.
- Open-source licence compliance in a product context.
- Early or first legal hire at a startup.
Location: Bengaluru
Skills: it,liability,protection,one,export,ip,compliance,investment
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