Our client, Atlassian, is seeking a Head of Legal Technology, Innovation & Operations.

Are you ready to design the technical infrastructure and innovation that powers legal work at one of the world's top SaaS companies? Are you a builder who has a vision for how legal teams can deliver greater business value by leveraging smarter workflows, intelligent automation, and data-driven strategies? Do you want to be part of a mission-led tech company as we scale our legal operations to support Atlassian’s rapid growth? If you answered “heck yeah” to all of the above, let’s talk!

About Atlassian:

Atlassian Corporation is a publicly held global software company with 13K employees that builds products designed to help teams plan, track, collaborate, and deliver work more effectively. Atlassians can choose where they work – whether in an office, from home, or a combination of the two. That way, Atlassians have more control over supporting their family, personal goals, and other priorities. We can hire people in any country where we have a legal entity. Interviews and onboarding are conducted virtually, a part of being a distributed-first company.

The Role:

Atlassian is looking for an experienced Legal Operations leader who can set a strategic vision for a world-class legal operations function and turn that vision into reality! Reporting to the General Counsel, the Head of Legal Technology, Innovation, and Operations will lead a transformative operations team focused on driving productivity, innovation, and performance across the entire Atlassian legal team. This role offers the unique opportunity to shape the future of legal operations through technology. Atlassian’s world-class legal team consists of ~100 individuals, and the current legal operations team consists of ~4 individuals.  Success in this role requires someone inquisitive, with entrepreneurial drive, and the agility to thrive in a fast-paced environment while shaping the legal operations function from the ground up.

Responsibilities: What you will do

Transformation and Innovation

• Drive and own the Legal technology roadmap, implementing AI, tools, and systems that promote legal team effectiveness and operational efficiencies, delivering technology and processes that improve contract management, litigation, IP portfolios, entity management, privacy by design, knowledge management, and legal spend.
• Build the legal team’s tech stack while ensuring the strategic, responsible, and ethical rollout of AI across the team.
• Develop trusted relationships with IT and product leaders, influencing their roadmaps and investment areas based on legal team use cases and priorities, while holding regular business reviews with Legal's cross-functional partners.
• Track the return on investment for our legal technology solutions, aiming to maximize the benefits of each tool we use.

Operational Management and Efficiency

• Build and execute a long-term roadmap to drive Legal team effectiveness and efficiencies, delivering technology that helps legal build to scale.
• Collaborate with the Chief of Staff to facilitate, create, and execute the legal team’s long-term strategic and operational planning process and follow-on actions. This includes providing the General Counsel Team (GCT) with a framework for prioritization and making investment trade-offs.
• Liaise with cross-functional teams such as our IT, Sales, Finance, Procurement, People, and R&D teams to build on established partnerships, drive strategic company-wide initiatives, and collaborate on projects.
• Hold regular business reviews with legal stakeholders.
• Stand up our litigation support function. Be a thought-leader in e-discovery, legal hold process,  document review, and help create and roll out a document retention policy.
• Help drive the legal department's annual planning cycle, including budget, headcount, workplace planning, and OKRs.

Financial Management and Data Analytics

• Run Legal like a business!  Continue to enhance our systems to collect and report on relevant spend data, improving the efficiency of our legal operations.
• Manage the budget for the legal team and coordinate spend with the General Counsel Leadership Team and partners in the Finance and People teams.  
• Stand up a world-class legal vendor management program to ensure quality outside counsel support at efficient rates and under optimal fee arrangements.
• Manage outside counsel negotiating fee agreements with legal vendors. Develop a governance and enforcement framework for vendor billing guidelines.
• Own the full Legal Department budget (outside counsel, technology, internal expenses), including forecasting, accruals, and variance analysis in partnership with Finance.

Knowledge Management

• Organize, implement, and manage legal institutional knowledge and trainings, working closely with Legal’s Program Management Office to uplevel our centralized knowledge management repository, and standardize processes, practices, ways of working, nomenclature, and templates.

Product Evangelism

• Be a champion of Atlassian products with other legal teams!  Advocate for Atlassian on customer calls, demos, webinars, events, and conferences.
• Be the “Voice of the Customer,” sharing customer insights and feedback with Atlassian Product teams to shape product strategy and development. Success will look like delivering direct and significant impact on product decisions and roadmaps.

Experience: What you will have:

• 10+ years of legal technology and operations experience, with a history of partnering with a General Counsel or Chief Legal Officer.
• Strategic vision with the ability to translate business goals into actionable technology roadmaps in a legal setting. The ability to tell a compelling story and explain the “why” behind this strategic vision.
• Previous success in leading,  managing, and developing a best-in-class Legal Technology, Legal Operations, or Practice Innovation team.
• A history of trusted collaboration with IT and R&D teams and building a culture of ongoing process improvement, open feedback loops, and tracking success metrics.
• Deep experience with generative AI solutions used in legal practice, as well as Atlassian’s own products, eBilling, litigation management, knowledge management, and CLMS platforms.
• Understanding of IT infrastructure, software development, data management, cybersecurity, and AI best practices.
• A team-oriented and collaborative approach to working with a sense of humor.
• Demonstrated interest in technology - artificial intelligence solutions application in work settings with natural curiosity, technological savvy, and willingness to learn and operate new tools and systems. A technical degree is a plus.
• Strategic thinking around legal resource deployment with strong analytical and problem-solving skills, capable of seeing the bigger picture while paying attention to detail.
• Ability to thrive in dynamic, fast-paced environments where no task is too big or too small.
• Service-oriented, responsive, and professional, with strong integrity and a focus on building trusted relationships.

Compensation, Benefits & Perks:

• At Atlassian, we strive to design equitable, explainable, and competitive compensation programs. To support this goal, the baseline of our range is higher than that of the typical market range, but in turn, we expect to hire most candidates near this baseline. Base pay within the range is ultimately determined by a candidate's skills, expertise, or experience. In the United States, we have three geographic pay zones. For this role, our current base pay ranges for new hires in each zone are:
• Zone A: $250,000 - $293,750
• Zone B: $225,000 - $264,375
• Zone C: $208,000 - $244,400
• This role is eligible for benefits, bonuses, and equity.
• Please visit go.atlassian.com/payzones for more information on which locations are included in each of our geographic pay zones. However, please confirm the zone for your specific location with your recruiter.
• Benefits & Perks:  Atlassian offers a wide range of perks and benefits designed to support you, your family, and to help you engage with your local community. Our offerings include health and well-being resources, paid volunteer days, and so much more. To learn more, visit go.atlassian.com/perksandbenefits.

Atlassian has exclusively engaged Kerwin Associates to conduct this search.  Any resumes sent directly to Atlassian will be forwarded to Kerwin Associates. If interested in this role, please contact Anne Kerwin Payne (anne@kerwin.com) and Danielle Ryan (danielle@kerwin.com) at Kerwin Associates.