Head of Legal

We are looking for an experienced and dynamic **Head of Legal** to join our team in** South Africa**.

**About Aerobotics**

Our mission is to provide intelligent tools to feed the world. We do this by providing tree and fruit insights to growers, in 18 countries around the world, enabled by drone imagery and artificial intelligence.

We have analysed over 170 million trees and 3 million fruit to date. Our team of 80+ people is based out of Cape Town and we have commercial offices in the USA, Portugal and Australia. Everything that we do and every decision that is made is driven by our Core Values.

**Context of the role**

The Head of Legal is responsible for leading the legal function at Aerobotics. Along with managing the day to day legal operations of the global business, this role includes the opportunity to guide strategy and execution across our organization and work with directors, executives and the entire team to achieve our business goals. The person filling this role will need to provide thoughtful and pragmatic legal advice, participate in high-level discussions, lead key legal projects and initiatives and facilitate execution of these in the business.

**How we work**

We build software to help farmers better understand, improve and protect their yields. Our tools help tree crop growers identify both macro and micro limiting factors in their orchards, guide them where to take action and assist them in collecting fruit data using our yield management software.

With one of our core values being ‘Remote First’, we are very flexible and are comfortable for our A-Team to work from wherever they are comfortable. We are about output and trust that the job will get done from the location deemed fit. With this being said, we do believe that some ‘in person’ face time with the team is also important, specifically for morale and team collaboration. We have an awesome office space that is designed to be a shared working space and we encourage that the teams come in, if possible, a minimum of twice a week.

**Key Responsibilities**
- Manage and head up the Legal Team (1 Legal Coordinator and external firms), reporting to the CFO
- Manage the company’s corporate legal functions, including privacy, intellectual property and employment law
- Drive the company’s legal strategy, effectively assessing risk and enabling effective decision-making across the business
- Handle complex commercial contracts with partners/ vendors/ customers and stakeholders
- Work cross-functionally with stakeholders across teams like Sales, Operations, Tech, People, Product and Marketing
- Partner with functional leaders to provide legal and compliance support across the company
- Manage external law firms and legal service providers, ensuring project completion and managing legal costs
- Advise executive, senior management and Board on various matters
- Manage the company’s corporate legal functions, including privacy, intellectual property and employment law
- Drafting, negotiation, interpretation and review of a wide variety of commercial contracts
- Act as the key legal lead on developing, negotiating and documenting agreements with strategic customers & partners in South Africa, USA, Australia and Europe
- Strive for continuous improvements in scalability and operational excellence in contract negotiation processes and execution
- **Corporate Structuring**-
- Assisting Finance in transfer pricing and cross border transactions requirements.
- Assessing impact and recommending actions based on Reserve Bank and Tax regulations
- Draft and manage Legal documentation and reporting for inter-company transactions
- **Investment / Fundraising**-
- Running and tracking the legal process for any future funding rounds.
- Handle legal diligence and negotiate & review transactional documents.
- **Corporate Governance**- Serving as company secretary and ensuring compliance with corporate laws of all group entities (RSA & USA).

**Required Qualifications**
- Qualified to practice law in South Africa or USA
- At least 4 years plus years of post-qualification legal experience, with a portion of such experience occurring in South Africa.

**Required Knowledge, Skills & Competencies**
- A legal generalist with exposure to a wide range of commercial legal skills.
- Solid commercial drafting, reviewing and negotiating skills
- High level of attention to detail.
- Strong organisational and project management skills
- Adaptive and ability to think on your feet
- Decision making capabilities
- Strong analytical skills
- Ability to work independently and be the responsible representative for the Legal Team
- Experience in managing litigation matters is useful

**Personal Characteristics**
- Strong ethics and integrity.
- Assertive, proactive and energetic.
- High level of intellectual agility, initiative, self-motivation, resourcefulness and patience.
- Ability to work with many different stakeholders and explain complex legal matters.
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