Head of Legal & Compliance

About this role

ABOUT MECKA AI

Mecka AI is building the data and deployment infrastructure for embodied intelligence. We collect, curate, and license the world's most useful robotics training data to leading AI labs, and we deploy real robotic systems with enterprise customers across hospitality, retail, QSR, pharmacy, logistics, and healthcare. We work with the foundation model teams shaping the next decade of robotics, and with the operators running real businesses today. Quality, trust, and execution are core to our partnerships.

THE ROLE

We're hiring a Head of Legal & Compliance to own Mecka's privacy, commercial, employment, and regulatory operating layer across Canada, the US, and China. This is the most accurate title because the role is broader than privacy alone and more legal/commercial than a pure people-operations or HR compliance seat.

You will be the internal owner for data privacy, customer agreements, employment contracts, outside counsel, and AI/robotics compliance risk. You do not need to be a traditional big-company general counsel, but you must be legally trained, commercially sharp, and comfortable building practical compliance systems inside a fast-moving robotics and AI company.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

DATA PRIVACY & DATA GOVERNANCE

- Privacy framework: Own Mecka's privacy program across PIPEDA, GDPR, customer contractual privacy obligations, and practical data handling requirements.

- Data licensing controls: Build the review process for robotics training data licensing, dataset provenance, permitted use, retention, deletion, and onward transfer obligations.

- Customer privacy diligence: Lead privacy and data-protection responses for AI labs, enterprise customers, and procurement teams.

- Internal governance: Create usable policies for data access, vendor handling, employee access, customer data, deployment data, and audit readiness.

COMMERCIAL AGREEMENTS

- AI lab agreements: Support and negotiate data licensing agreements with foundation model teams and AI labs, including usage rights, exclusivity, confidentiality, indemnities, and compliance obligations.

- Deployment contracts: Own the legal operating layer for robot deployment MSAs, statements of work, SLAs, support terms, acceptance criteria, and customer site requirements.

- Commercial judgment: Help the business distinguish legal risk that matters from language that can be solved with a practical fallback.

- Contract process: Build lightweight contracting playbooks, clause libraries, approval paths, and negotiation standards that speed up revenue instead of slowing it down.

EMPLOYMENT, PEOPLE OPS & GLOBAL COMPLIANCE

- Employment contracts: Own employment contract templates, offer documentation, contractor agreements, and employment compliance across Canada, the US, and China.

- Cross-geo coordination: Partner with leadership on entity, EOR, contractor, confidentiality, invention assignment, and termination workflows across Mecka's operating geographies.

- People-ops compliance: Build the compliance backbone for onboarding, policy acknowledgments, worker classification, documentation, and manager-facing employment guidance.

- Practical escalation: Know when an issue requires outside counsel and when the business needs a clear recommendation now.

OUTSIDE COUNSEL & LEGAL OPERATIONS

- Counsel management: Manage outside law firm relationships across employment, commercial, IP, privacy, and China-specific matters.

- Budget discipline: Keep legal spend focused, scoped, and accountable to business priorities.

- Matter ownership: Translate business needs into tight legal workstreams, review counsel output, and turn legal advice into operational decisions.

- Legal systems: Stand up the basic legal operations infrastructure: templates, trackers, repository, renewal calendar, approval workflows, and audit trails.

AI, ROBOTICS & REGULATORY RISK

- Regulatory monitoring: Track emerging AI, robotics, privacy, safety, and data-use regulation that affects Mecka's data licensing and deployment businesses.

- Deployment risk: Partner with operations, hardware, software, and customer teams on site-level compliance issues, safety obligations, incident documentation, and customer requirements.

- IP protection: Coordinate with counsel on IP ownership, invention assignment, confidentiality, trade secret handling, and customer-data boundaries.

- Board-ready risk view: Maintain a clear view of legal and compliance risk that leadership can understand and act on.

WHO YOU ARE

REQUIRED BACKGROUND

- Active bar admission: JD, LLB, or equivalent law degree, with active bar admission in Canada, the US, or both.

- 5+ years of practice: Five or more years of post-call legal practice, with a meaningful focus on corporate and commercial work.

- Corporate & commercial depth: Hands-on experience drafting and negotiating commercial agreements — technology, data, SaaS, AI, robotics, enterprise services, vendor and partner contracts.

- Employment & contractor work: Working fluency with employment contracts, contractor structures, confidentiality/IP agreements, and cross-border employment issues.

- Operator mindset: You have worked close enough to a business that you know legal advice has to be usable, timely, and commercially grounded.

STRONG SIGNALS

- AI or data infrastructure exposure: Experience with AI labs, data licensing, marketplace compliance, workforce integrity, robotics, autonomy, or technical operations businesses.

- Startup legal ownership: You have been the first or most senior internal legal/compliance operator at a venture-backed company, or you have effectively played that role from a firm or hybrid seat.

- Cross-border range: Familiarity with Canada-US employment and privacy issues, with enough China exposure to manage local counsel effectively.

- Regulatory pragmatism: You can build policies and controls that satisfy serious customers without importing enterprise bureaucracy…