Commercial Counsel

About the role

The Commercial Counsel will own the full lifecycle of commercial agreements at Apollo - from vendor contracts to customer-facing MDSAs to the order forms our sales team closes every day. You'll be a trusted partner to our Sales organization - not in a tolerate-the-sales-team way, but in a know-them-by-name, actually-enjoy-it way - as well as a key player in shaping how legal supports Apollo's growth.

Responsibilities

• Draft, review, and negotiate master data services agreements and DPAs with customers and work closely with Sales, Customer Success, and Support teams to close both new and renewal revenue deals.
• Own first-line review of customer order forms, resolving issues with speed and commercial judgment so deals keep moving.
• Draft, review, and negotiate a wide range of other commercial agreements, including vendor agreements, marketing agreements, partnership agreements, and reseller agreements.
• Collaborate closely with the Product and Privacy Counsel and proactively engage with the Product team.
• Identify gaps and provide resources and training to go-to-market teams as it relates to contracting process and contracting terms - building playbooks and scalable tools, not just answering one-off questions.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives that improve how legal works with Sales, Product, Partnerships, and other teams, creating enthusiasm for what legal can enable.
• Aid with other legal support tasks that arise.

Qualifications

• J.D. from an accredited law school and active license to practice law in at least one U.S. state.
• 7+ years of law firm or in-house experience with a focus on commercial transactions or contracts.
• Meaningful in-house SaaS experience drafting and negotiating MDSAs and DPAs. You know how these deals are structured and where they typically break down.
• A track record of building scalable legal infrastructure: playbooks, templates, training, and process improvements that outlast any single deal.
• The ability to operate with significant autonomy on complex, ambiguous problems. You identify the issue, develop the approach, and drive to resolution without needing the problem fully defined first.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to tailor your message to any audience - from a rep on a deal call to a C-suite conversation about enterprise risk.
• Genuine enthusiasm for partnering with Sales. This is a real requirement, not a buzzword.
• A bias toward impact: you create systems that eliminate toil, respond with urgency, and own outcomes rather than effort.
• Comfort with fast-paced environments and competing priorities. You prioritize ruthlessly and communicate proactively.
• A sense of humor. Non-negotiable. Positive attitude also non-negotiable.
• AI Fluency (Required — Not Optional): We use AI every day to move faster, think more clearly, and do more with less. We're looking for someone who has genuinely integrated AI into how they practice - not someone who's planning to explore it. Specifically, We Look For AI embedded into your core legal workflows: contract review, research, drafting, summarization, process design as repeatable systems, not one-off experiments.

Preferred, But Not Required

• Partnership, reseller, or channel agreement experience.
• Interest in privacy and emerging areas of technology law, such as ML and AI.
• Experience in in-house roles, particularly in fast-paced, high-growth environments.
• Product-adjacent legal experience: API agreements, feature-specific terms, platform policies, or direct collaboration with product or engineering teams.
• Familiarity with Ironclad contract management software.
• Knowledge of intellectual property-related legal issues.
• Love of metrics. Or at least a healthy respect for them. Math optional.