Litigation & Employment Counsel

Instawork is on a mission to create meaningful economic opportunities for skilled hourly professionals in communities around the globe. Our AI-powered labor marketplace helps local businesses scale, and enables global technology companies to push the frontiers of robotics and AI. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and others, we’re looking for exceptional talent to reimagine the way the world works.

We're looking for a self-motivated, intellectually curious, and pragmatic Litigation & Employment Counsel to join our lean, high-impact Legal team. You should be comfortable using AI tools to drive efficiency in your legal work and eager to help build scalable processes as the company grows.

The Opportunity

This role starts with hands-on ownership of Instawork's individual employment and worker-classification claims - and it's designed to grow. As you build streamlined, scalable processes for that caseload, your scope expands into platform-level litigation, product counseling, and broader advice-and-counsel work across the business.

What You'll Do:

• Assess individual claims, directly engage with opposing counsel to negotiate resolutions, and identify trends across matters that should be addressed proactively
• Handle a wide variety of litigation and pre-litigation matters in state and federal courts and administrative forums, especially matters involving worker classification and employment-related claims, and help shape the team's overall litigation strategy as the caseload evolves
• Advise Instawork's Trust and Safety on investigations of employment-related claims, on-platform incidents, or policy violations
• Create and implement scalable processes for the legal team, including identifying opportunities for automation and process innovation
• Leverage AI and other technology tools to increase efficiency, improve work product, and support the team's continuous improvement goals
• Manage the relationship with relevant outside counsel as needed, including strategy, discovery, and work product
• Partner with senior members of the Legal team, the People team, and business leaders throughout the company to evaluate legal risks and provide subject matter expertise on a broad range of issues - including developing and delivering related training for HR and business teams
• Help prepare for and mitigate exposure that may create litigation risk in the future

Who You Are:

• JD and California bar admission in good standing (or barred in another state and qualified for and willing to maintain Registered In-House Counsel status with California State Bar)
• 5+ years of legal experience in a law firm and/or in-house
• Experience in the technology, gig economy, or marketplace industry strongly preferred
• Mature judgment, with the ability to distill complex, competing legal risks into clear, actionable guidance
• Tolerance for ambiguity and reprioritizing quickly in a fast-paced environment
• Team mentality and recognition that no task is too small
• Proven ability to manage a high volume of matters while maintaining quality and composure
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with a sense of perspective and humor

Nice to Have:

• Prior in-house counsel experience
• Experience with workers' compensation and insurance coverage matters
• Proficiency with AI-assisted legal research, drafting, or workflow tools
• Continuous learning mindset: you bring strong skills and experience to the table and are open to new approaches, tools, and ways of working

For CA-based applicants:

• The base salary for this position is $175,000 - $225,000
• This position is eligible for equity in the form of stock options
• This position is eligible for Instawork benefits, including:
• A variety of medical, dental, and vision plans with coverage beginning on the date of hire
• Flexible paid time off
• At least 8 paid company holidays annually
• Phone stipend
• Commuter stipend
• Supplemental pay on qualified leaves
• Employee health savings accounts (HSA) contribution
• Flexible spending plans
• 401K plan
• Perkspot - discount program through Lumity

#LI-Onsite

Our Values

• Empathy, Trust & Candor
  We put ourselves in the shoes of our colleagues and customers and don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, instead building trust through honest and direct feedback.

• Bias for Action
  We practice high-velocity decision-making, clear-eyed that we often operate with incomplete information. Growing quickly means it’s OK to be wrong, so long as we learn from our mistakes and course correct!

• Always Be Learning
  We’re a curious bunch, and with AI transforming our workplace we encourage everyone to learn from each other, compounding our knowledge and experience to help us change an entire industry.

• Act Like an Owner
  We work long, hard, and smart, building products that delight our users and drive growth. Your ability to impact Instawork is limited only by your courage and conviction, not your job description.

About Instawork

Founded in 2015, Instawork is the nation’s leading online labor marketplace for food services, hospitality, light industry, and logistics, connecting more than 7M skilled workers with local restaurants, hotels, warehouses, stadiums, and more. Our AI-powered platform serves thousands of businesses across more than 50 major markets in the United States and Canada. We're not just helping fill shifts, we're supporting local economies - and we're just getting started!

Instawork has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Forbes included us on their Next Billion Dollar Startups list; RetailTech Breakthrough named us Workforce Hiring Solution of the Year for 2025; and Inc. 5000 recognized us as one of the country's top 10% fastest-growing companies two years in a row. But what matters most is our impact. We're solving real problems for real people, and we’re doing it at scale.

Join our team to help us build something that matters! We’re looking for superstars who want to help us shape the future of work. With hubs in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Chicago, city offices in New York, Phoenix, and Singapore, we're back to working together in-person five days a week because we believe the best ideas happen when great people collaborate face-to-face. We also value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

Ready to make an impact? Learn more at www.instawork.com/about.

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