Backblaze External Website - Sr. Director of Commercial and Legal Affairs (LATAM)

• Commercial Leadership and Deal Execution • Lead the company’s commercial contracting function, serving as the primary legal owner for complex, high-value, and strategic transactions. • Draft, review, and negotiate a wide range of sophisticated commercial agreements, including enterprise SaaS agreements, MSAs, SOWs, partnership and channel agreements, reseller agreements, professional services agreements, consulting agreements, and related technology transactions. • Act as the senior escalation point for complex or high-risk negotiations, providing strategic guidance to Sales, Business Development, and executive stakeholders. • Ensure commercial terms align with Backblaze’s business objectives, risk tolerance, and long-term growth strategy. • Provide practical, business-oriented legal advice on global privacy and data protection matters, including GDPR, CCPA, and other applicable data protection regimes. • Oversee and support the development, negotiation, and maintenance of data protection agreements, privacy terms, and related contractual frameworks. • Partner closely with Security, Compliance, and Product teams to assess privacy risk and ensure data protection obligations are integrated into business processes and products. • Product and AI Counseling • Serve as a trusted legal advisor to Product and Engineering teams, advising on product design, feature development, and launches from inception through release. • Counsel on issues related to data use, AI and machine learning, intellectual property, open source, and regulatory considerations impacting product development. • Advise on the commercial, privacy, and contractual terms for AI features and AI-driven workloads, and help the business adopt AI responsibly and at speed. • Help teams identify and mitigate legal risk while enabling innovation and speed. • Process, Playbooks, and Scale • Lead the development and continuous improvement of commercial playbooks, templates, policies, and negotiation frameworks to support efficient scaling. • Optimize contracting processes to improve speed, consistency, and quality while maintaining appropriate controls, including through the use of AI-enabled contracting and legal tooling. • Partner with Legal Operations to enhance tooling, workflows, and reporting related to commercial and privacy matters. • Stay current on legal and regulatory developments relevant to cloud services, SaaS, privacy, AI, and technology transactions. • Cross-Functional Leadership • Act as a trusted partner to Sales, Product, Engineering, Marketing, Finance, Security, and other cross-functional teams. • Provide training and guidance to internal stakeholders on contracting best practices, privacy requirements, and risk awareness. • Collaborate closely with other Legal and Compliance leaders to ensure alignment across the broader legal function. • People Leadership and Team Development • Lead and manage legal professionals supporting commercial, privacy, and product counseling functions. • Provide mentorship, coaching, and performance management to support professional growth and high-quality legal work. • Set clear priorities, allocate work effectively, and ensure consistent, high-impact legal support across the business. • Partner with members of the Legal & Compliance team, as well as senior leadership, on team planning, resourcing, and process improvements as the function scales. • The Right Fit • Deep experience drafting and negotiating complex commercial agreements, including enterprise customer and strategic partnership transactions. • Strong understanding of SaaS business models, cloud services, and technology transactions. • Solid working knowledge of global privacy and data protection laws, with the ability to translate legal requirements into practical business guidance. • Demonstrated experience providing product counseling to product and engineering teams. • Fluency in the legal issues raised by AI, including AI in products, AI-assisted contracting, and AI governance, or a strong interest and demonstrated ability to build depth in this area quickly. • Excellent business judgment and the ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-moving environment. • Proven ability to lead, influence, and collaborate across functions and levels of seniority. • Clear and effective communicator who can translate complex legal issues into concise, business-friendly advice. • Hands-on, pragmatic, and solutions-oriented, with a strong sense of ownership and accountability. • Prior experience managing, mentoring, and developing legal team members in an in-house environment.