Overview
Head of Legal Jobs in Paris, Île-de-France, France at PROPHESEE
Title: Head of Legal
Company: PROPHESEE
Location: Paris, Île-de-France, France
About PROPHESEE
Prophesee is the inventor of the world’s most advanced neuromorphic vision systems. The company developed a breakthrough event-based vision approach to machine vision that enables dramatic reductions in power consumption, latency, and data processing requirements. By mimicking how the human eye and brain work, Prophesee’s patented Metavision® sensors and algorithms reveal information that is invisible to traditional frame-based sensors.
Prophesee’s technology is transforming applications across industrial automation, aerospace and defense, autonomous systems, IoT, AR/VR, and mobile.
Headquartered in Paris, Prophesee has offices in Grenoble and Shanghai.
Job backgroundAs Head of Legal, you are Prophesee's sole in-house counsel and primary legal advisor. Your day-to-day focus is on commercial contracts, IP strategy and corporate governance.
You will manage a panel of trusted external counsel across specialised domains (patent prosecution, M&A, export control, employment litigation), acting as the internal owner who briefs, coordinates and challenges them.
The role requires a business-oriented mindset: you give clear, actionable advice and help the company move fast, while building the processes and templates that will make the legal function scalable as Prophesee grows.
What You Will Own Directly
Commercial contracts
- Negotiate, draft and review day-to-day agreements: licensing, SaaS, OEM, partnerships, NDAs
- Build and maintain a library of contract templates and playbooks for the commercial teams
- Support Business Development on complex deals, providing clear guidance on risk and structure without blocking execution
Intellectual property
- Define and own Prophesee's IP strategy: what to file, what to publish defensively, what to license
- Assist with patents filling, maintain IP portfolio and monitors potential infringements.
- Brief and manage external patent attorneys on prosecution; ensure the portfolio serves the business strategy
- Advise the CPO on SDK and API licensing models, open-source policy, and third-party IP obligations
Corporate governance
- Handle routine corporate matters: board resolutions, shareholder agreements, subsidiary maintenance
- Coordinate with external counsel on financing rounds and M&A processes, owning the internal workstream and due diligence
Compliance
- Track evolving regulations relevant to Prophesee: AI Act, GDPR, data localisation, dual-use / export control
- Identify when external specialist advice is needed and brief the relevant counsel proactively
- Ensure the company has appropriate compliance processes in place without over-engineering them
Support product and engineering teams
- Reviews product features for legal risks (compliance by design)
- Help translate legal requirements into practical guidelines.
What You Will Manage Via External Counsel
You are not expected to be a specialist in all of these areas, but you are expected to know when to bring in external expertise, how to brief it effectively, and how to keep costs under control.
- Patent prosecution and freedom-to-operate analyses (specialist IP firms)
- M&A and financing transactions (corporate law firms)
- Export control and dual-use compliance, including any US ITAR/EAR exposure
- Employment litigation and works council proceedings
- Jurisdiction-specific matters as Prophesee expands internationally
Key areas of expertise
- IP & Patent strategy
- Commercial contracts
- Export control / dual-use
- Corporate governance
- M&A / due diligence
- GDPR & data privacy
- Employment law (FR)
- SDK / API licensing
- VC financing
Soft skills
- Comfortable operating as a generalist: able to context-switch from a licensing negotiation to an employment matter to a board resolution in the same day
- Business-oriented: you give clear, actionable advice rather than exhaustive legal memos
- Able to build structure from scratch: processes, templates, and a legal function that scales
- Fluent in English and French (working language for most contracts is English)
Qualifications
- 7+ years of legal experience, combining private practice (tech / IP / corporate) and in-house
- Demonstrable experience in deep-tech, hardware, semiconductor, or defense-adjacent industries
- Strong track record in commercial contract negotiation and IP portfolio management
- Exposure to export control regimes (dual-use, ITAR/EAR) is a significant advantage
