Overview

Physical Superintelligence is an exceptionally well-funded seed-stage startup with roots at Google, Meta, DeepMind, NVIDIA, Citadel, Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, the Perimeter Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Study building AI systems to discover new physics at scale. We are seeking a Chief Operating Officer to serve as a strategic partner to the CEO, to build the operating backbone of the company, and to run PSI itself as a tightly integrated, agent-augmented organization.

Our mission is to discover and commercialize transformative physics breakthroughs at scale with artificial superintelligence, safely, verifiably, and for broad public benefit.

The last century's golden age of physics gave us transistors, lasers, and nuclear energy. We believe artificial superintelligence will unlock the next one. We're creating the infrastructure to industrialize scientific discovery and usher in this new era.

Role and Responsibilities

Take the legal function to its next stage. As our first in-house legal hire, you will build on existing legal foundation, decide what is best owned internally as we grow, and partner with existing counsel where their expertise serves us well. Establish the contracts, processes, and playbooks we need now, and build the function so it scales with the company rather than becoming a bottleneck.
Own complex customer contracting. Lead negotiation and structuring of agreements with sophisticated enterprise customers across compute infrastructure, energy, and adjacent industrial verticals. Bring creativity to deal structure, moving deals from pilot to production and from early contracts into large, long-term commitments, while protecting PSI's IP and limiting downside risk.
Support fundraising. Partner with leadership and investors through financing rounds and the diligence that comes with them: corporate housekeeping, cap table and equity hygiene, entity and governance structure, and clean documentation. Keep the company in a fundable posture and support board and governance matters on an ongoing basis.
Cover employment and people matters. Own offer letters, equity grants, contractor and employee classification, immigration support, policies, and the employment questions that come with rapid hiring. Build the foundation before issues arise rather than after.
Protect intellectual property. Stand up the IP program: invention assignment, trade secret protection, patent strategy in coordination with technical leadership, and open-source policy. IP is core to a deep tech company and you treat it that way.
Own compliance for a company doing physics at scale. The regulatory surface here extends well beyond customer contracts. Doing physics, large-scale compute, and energy work brings real obligations around export controls, data protection and privacy, safety, and sector-specific requirements. Identify what applies, build pragmatic compliance that fits an early-stage company, and keep PSI ahead of its exposure as the science and the business advance.
Be a commercial partner, not a gatekeeper. Give fast, practical, risk-calibrated advice that helps the business move, and know when to bring in specialist outside counsel rather than building everything in-house.

What We're Looking For

A first-principles, build-it-yourself operator. You have stood up or substantially built a legal function before, or you have operated as a sole or near-sole in-house lawyer and are ready to do it again. You are comfortable owning a broad surface and working alongside outside counsel without a large team behind you on day one.
Strong commercial contracting experience with sophisticated, high-value enterprise customers. You can structure and negotiate complex deals creatively while keeping risk in check, and you can speak to deal structure and the delivery realities behind it, not just the paper.
Venture financing experience. You have taken a company through financing rounds or supported them closely, and you understand what clean diligence and a fundable corporate posture require.
Working command of employment law in a fast-growing company: hiring, equity, classification, policies, and the issues that surface as headcount scales quickly.
Solid grounding in IP relevant to deep tech: trade secrets, invention assignment, patent strategy, and open source.
Command of the regulatory landscape that comes with advanced technology work, including export controls, data and privacy, and safety, with the judgment to know what matters now and what can wait.
Bias to ship. Demonstrated ability to operate without bureaucracy in fast-moving environments. You give clear answers and move things forward; you do not stall.

Nice to Have

Experience at a deep tech, hardware, energy, or compute infrastructure company, or another business operating at the frontier of a regulated technical field.
Familiarity with export control regimes (EAR/ITAR) and the national-security-adjacent considerations that come with advanced compute, physics, and energy.
Background advising on AI, data, or emerging-technology regulatory questions.
Experience managing a panel of outside counsel cost-effectively.
Admission to practice in Massachusetts, or eligibility for in-house registration.

How We Work

People own problems end to end, from spec to ship. We write contracts before logic, test against real systems instead of mocks, and favor simple designs that ship over clever ones that do not. Our development process is AI-native: the team works with agentic tools daily, writes specs that are legible to humans and agents alike, and leads with leverage.

Location and Compensation

This role is based in Boston. We will consider remote candidates on a case-by-case basis. We offer competitive compensation including salary, benefits, and meaningful early-stage equity. We evaluate on judgment, commercial instinct, breadth, and the quality of what you have built. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diverse perspectives in building platforms for AI-driven discovery.

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