Employment Counsel

About this role

Beacon is building the essential technology infrastructure for the everyday economy: the businesses, organizations, and services that make real life work, and that mainstream tech has largely left behind. We acquire, operate, and grow vertical market software and services companies: niche, founder-built businesses serving industries that are too specific for the enterprise giants and too profitable to ignore. Our model is simple. We buy great businesses, invest in their continued growth, and hold them permanently. We are not a financial firm. We are technology entrepreneurs and operators who believe the most important businesses in the world are already running quietly in industries most people never think about. Our job is to find them, support the people who built them, and make them better. We seek out founders who have built their business by spending years understanding their market and prioritizing their customers' specific needs. Our flexible structure offers entrepreneurs a unique option to implement a transition that ensures the continuity of the company while receiving liquidity at full value for their equity in their business. No mandate to cut, flip, or roll up into something unrecognizable. We are permanent, committed capital with no exit pressure and a long-term time horizon, backed by a diverse base of investors including Wall Street (D1 Capital, CPMG), Silicon Valley (General Catalyst and Lightspeed), the family offices of world-class technology entrepreneurs (including the founders of Stripe, DoorDash, and Ramp), and evergreen funds built for the long game (Sator Grove).

Beacon was founded by Nilam Ganenthiran, entrepreneur, former President of Instacart, and investor at D1 Capital, who has spent his career building, scaling, and backing high-growth technology businesses.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking a highly skilled and entrepreneurially-minded employment lawyer to join Beacon’s legal team as our first dedicated employment specialist. This is a foundational role — you will build Beacon’s employment legal function from the ground up, partnering closely with HR to establish the policies, templates, and processes that will underpin how Beacon and its portfolio companies operate as employers. Reporting to Beacon’s VP, Legal, you will serve as the go-to employment law resource across the organization, advising on the full spectrum of employment matters: from day-to-day questions arising across our growing portfolio to managing complex terminations, navigating employment claims and litigation, and building out the scalable infrastructure that a permanent-hold, multi-entity acquirer needs. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role for a lawyer who thrives on building, is energized by variety, and wants to own an entire function rather than execute within one.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Employment Function Builder: Own the build-out of Beacon’s employment legal function. This means establishing the infrastructure from scratch: designing the governance model, setting employment law coverage across Beacon and its portfolio, and creating the workflows and escalation protocols that allow the business to operate at scale. You will be the single point of accountability for employment law across the organization and will define what that function looks like.

• HR Partnership and Policy Development: Work hand-in-hand with Beacon’s HR team to build the foundational building blocks of the employment relationship — employment agreements, offer letter templates, onboarding and offboarding documentation, HR policies, employee handbooks, and codes of conduct. Ensure all policies and practices are legally compliant, commercially sensible, and scalable across a multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction organization. Partner with HR on sensitive people matters, providing real-time legal guidance that balances risk management with practical business outcomes.

• Portfolio Employment Support: Serve as the employment law resource for Beacon’s portfolio of vertical market software companies. Field and resolve the full range of employment questions that arise across the portfolio—compensation and benefits, workplace accommodation, leaves of absence, performance management, misconduct investigations, and more. Develop repeatable frameworks and toolkits that allow portfolio company operators to handle routine matters confidently while knowing when to escalate.

• Terminations and Separations: Manage and advise on all aspects of employee terminations and separations across Beacon and its portfolio, including without-cause terminations, performance-based dismissals, restructurings, and mutual separations. Draft and negotiate separation agreements and releases. Advise on appropriate severance entitlements under applicable employment standards and common law, minimizing legal exposure while achieving business objectives. Provide practical, real-time guidance to HR and management on how to conduct terminations appropriately.

• Employment Claims and Litigation Management: Own the management of employment-related claims and disputes, including human rights complaints, wrongful dismissal claims, constructive dismissal claims, and regulatory complaints before the Ministry of Labour or equivalent bodies. Where external counsel is engaged, act as the primary internal contact, managing the relationship, providing instructions, and ensuring alignment with Beacon’s objectives and budget. Maintain a working knowledge of active matters and provide regular updates to leadership.

• Templates, Precedents, and Playbooks: Build and maintain a library of employment law templates, precedents, and playbooks that can be leveraged across Beacon and its portfolio. This includes offer letters and employment agreements (standard and executive), termination letters, severance templates, separation agreements, performance improvement plan frameworks, investigation protocols, and employment standards compliance checklists. Your…