Assistant General Counsel

About Merlin: Merlin (NASDAQ: MRLN) is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company building a non-human pilot to deliver full-stack autonomy for any aircraft from takeoff to touchdown. The Merlin Pilot autonomy system powers a growing range of aircraft and mission profiles and has been proven through hundreds of autonomous flights from Merlin's global flight test facilities, including Kerikeri, New Zealand; Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and soon, Bedford, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Boston, Merlin is expanding its organization to accelerate the development and deployment of its autonomy platform, helping customers solve some of aviation's most pressing challenges, from pilot shortages to improving flight safety. Backed by some of the world's leading investors prior to its public listing, Merlin continues to advance the certification and commercialization of autonomous flight across commercial and defense aviation.  About You: You are a business-minded government contracts attorney who moves comfortably between FAR/DFARS and commercial contract negotiation, and who appreciates that both are vital to our mission to create the Operating System of Record for autonomous flight. Partnering closely with Contracts Management, Program Management, Finance, Revenue and Supply Chain, you bring legal oversight to proposals and procurement, provide guidance to the teams executing existing agreements, and help shape the contracting strategy that lets the business grow with confidence. You have real experience structuring and negotiating complex government contract vehicles, but you are just as capable running a commercial NDA or technology license to signature without hand-holding. This is expected to be your primary area of expertise and the core of the role.   You understand what it means to work inside a small and growing legal department: the range of matters is broad, headcount is lean, and you will be expected to jump in outside your lane when the business needs it. You see gaps in your own experience as places to grow into, not reasons to say no, and you'd rather learn a new area on the job than sit it out until you master the theory.   You are energized by building things that do not exist yet: playbooks, templates, and intake processes that enable a small legal team to operate like a much larger one.   You crave the opportunity to operate with autonomy in a fast-paced, highly regulated environment, and are comfortable being the primary point of contact for a growing volume of inbound legal requests from the business.