The Global Deal Team Americas Assistant General Counsel is a senior lawyer responsible for leading an industry pillar of Microsoft’s Global Deal Team—a high-performing, distributed legal organization within Corporate, External and Legal Affairs (CELA), a community of 2,000+ legal and compliance professionals. The team supports complex enterprise transactions with Microsoft’s largest and most strategic customers (excluding public sector) around the world. The Assistant General Counsel leadership role helps drive revenue and accelerate deal velocity through strategic legal leadership, direct engagement on high-impact negotiations, operational excellence, and innovative use of technology and AI—while navigating the regulatory, cultural, and contracting diversity of multiple jurisdictions and languages.
This Assistant General Counsel serves as the primary CELA point of contact for senior enterprise leadership in Americas that are responsible for pursuing and closing complex commercial transactions with Microsoft’s most important customers in Financial Services, Manufacturing and Retail industries. You will partner with sales, operations, finance, product and engineering, marketing, and security/trust stakeholders to align customer expectations with Microsoft’s risk posture, policies, and compliance obligations. The role collaborates closely with regional Legal Affairs leaders who are subject matter experts in the Americas and their regulations and who lead public sector matters and non-deal workstreams.
Reporting to the Global Deal Team Lead for Americas, this position is one of three Assistant General Counsels who serve on the GDT Americas leadership team and who partner to maintain a consistent approach, share best practices and rapidly learn together to scale solutions.
This successful candidate could be based in Redmond, Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C. This role involves some international travel.
Responsibilities
Leadership & People Management
- Lead, inspire, and develop a high-performing team of legal professionals supporting complex enterprise transactions. Cultivate a culture of collaboration, inclusion, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Translate Global Deal Team priorities into a strategy and operating plan aligned to enterprise sales priorities, operational execution requirements, and Americas-specific market drivers in the Financial Services, Manufacturing and Retail industries.
- Own operating cadence for your team (intake, prioritization, escalation, and executive communications) and deliver on agreed service levels, quality, and customer experience outcomes.
- Drive change by simplifying processes, clarifying decision rights, and adopting scalable approaches that improve speed and consistency.
- Coach and develop talent, including building succession plans and strengthening negotiation, drafting, and issue-spotting capability across the Americas deal support ecosystem. Partner with Global Deal Team regional leads to create cross-region development and “follow-the-sun” opportunities for members of the global team.
Complex Commercial Transactions & Negotiation Leadership
- Lead and directly support high-value, complex enterprise negotiations across Americas, advising senior business executives and driving practical, risk-informed outcomes in a multi-jurisdiction environment.
- Develop and implement regional negotiation strategies and scalable solutions for recurring issues (e.g., AI models, data usage and protection, security), aligned with Global Deal Team playbooks, contract standards, and escalation paths.
- Coach and mentor lawyers and business partners on negotiation tactics, drafting approaches, and risk analysis. Raise capability across the region through targeted training and deal retrospectives, including on emerging regulatory and AI topics.
- Partner with sales, finance, and field teams to identify systemic deal blockers (e.g., handoff gaps, sequential workflow delays, and late-stage escalations) and implement repeatable solutions with the global team.
- Ensure compliance with Microsoft policies and applicable laws and regulations across Americas, partnering with specialist teams (e.g. product teams, privacy, security, competition/antitrust, trade, regulatory, and accessibility) as needed.
- Support enterprise revenue objectives by enabling the sale and consumption of Microsoft Cloud and AI solutions through efficient, customer-focused contracting.
Operational Excellence, Process Improvement & AI Adoption
- Apply systems thinking to improve end-to-end deal processes across Americas, improving seller and customer experiences.
- Advance adoption of AI-enabled contracting, knowledge, and workflow tools to streamline negotiations, automate low-impact work, and increase consistency in drafting and issue-spotting—while maintaining appropriate legal review and quality controls.
- Establish feedback loops and knowledge-sharing (e.g., playbooks, learning sessions and post-deal briefings) to scale best practices across Americas and inform global standards.
Qualifications
Required/minimum qualifications
- Juris Doctor Degree or international equivalent degree AND 9+ years experience as a practicing attorney in law firm or in-house roles, including significant experience leading or influencing complex commercial transactions in a technology and/or enterprise sales environment, ideally across multiple jurisdictions or experience with a multinational.
- OR equivalent experience.
- Active license to practice law in a jurisdiction and capable of meeting admission requirements in relevant jurisdiction.
- Demonstrated people leadership and talent development experience, with the ability to build high-performing, inclusive teams.
- Deep experience supporting enterprise sales and complex, high-value customer negotiations, including the ability to balance customer experience, business priorities, and legal risk in a cross-cultural environment.
- Experience advising on technology transactions (e.g., cloud services, software licensing, SaaS, professional services, strategic partnerships, and/or AI models and solutions).
- Proven ability to operate effectively in a large, matrixed, multinational organization and to lead through influence with diverse stakeholders across multiple countries; experience managing localization and jurisdiction-specific contracting considerations is a plus.
- Exceptional negotiation and drafting skills, with a track record of closing complex, high-value commercial agreements and managing escalations.
- Stakeholder management skills, including the ability to advise and influence leaders and coach others.
- Commercial transactions expertise, strong people leadership, and a passion for innovation to help scale high-quality deal support across Americas as part of a global team.
Legal Counsel M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $160,700 - $284,400 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $207,700 - $311,500 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.
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