Legal Counsel / Senior Legal Counsel

CHAOS Inc. is a global technology company delivering next-generation capabilities to the defense and critical industrial sectors. Founded in 2022 by a seasoned leadership team, CHAOS has quickly become the place where world-class multi-disciplinary engineers come to build mission-critical technologies. CHAOS has a mission-focused culture, dedicated to solving the toughest technical challenges. Its unique agile engineering approach enables rapid prototyping, while deep partnerships with defense and industry ensure real-world solutions.

Role Overview: 

CHAOS is looking for its second legal hire to form the foundation of its Legal and Compliance team. This is a unique opportunity to build and shape the legal function from the ground up at a scaling startup, with significant impact on our operational strategy and risk management.  This person will work closely with the VP of Legal and Operations on all areas of legal and compliance, including commercial and government contracts, intellectual property, export compliance, employment, and corporate governance. They will collaborate with every other team at the company, including Engineering, Business Development, Marketing, and Finance. This role will be given autonomy to fix and build things on their own – we need a generalist who doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty but can also help scale the team as we grow. 

Responsibilities:  

• Provide legal advice and guidance on a wide range of legal and compliance issues including government contracts, intellectual property, export controls, employment law, and commercial agreements. 
• Help create processes around multiple areas of compliance, including trade compliance and FCC issues. 
• Draft, review, and maintain relevant policies 
• Help manage overall recordkeeping and contract management 
• Help maintain company registrations and government systems (e.g., DECCS, SNAP-R). 
• Help design and implement new compliance-related policies as needed 

Qualifications: 

• 5+ years of experience at a top law firm or as in-house counsel at a technology company 
• Experience with government contracts and/or export compliance a plus 
• What we have to do next won’t always be obvious; you’re comfortable figuring out what is needed and then doing it 
• You are comfortable learning technical concepts as they relate to legal rules, especially related to radar 
• Excellent written and oral communication skills 
• U.S. Person status is required as this position needs to access export-controlled data 

Why CHAOS?

• Health Benefits: Your medical, dental and vision benefits will be 100% paid for by the company
• Additional benefits: life, FSA, HSA, 401k (+ Company match), and more
• Our Perks: free daily lunch, ‘No meeting Fridays’, unlimited PTO, casual dress code
• Compensation Components: competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance + (coming soon!) annual bonuses
• Company Size: 150 employees and counting!
• More About Us: We're building the next generation of aerospace, defense and critical industry technologies with a seasoned team of mission-focused individuals. We were founded in June 2022 and our goal is to become the platform where world-class engineers come to solve critical, real-world problems. We use agile engineering approaches which enable rapid prototyping, deep partnerships with the defense industry ensuring real-world application, and our newly-invented Coherence platform (through which we’ve made a fundamental breakthrough) improves sensor performance and decision-making in real-time. As of April 2025 we have raised $490M (including a $275M Series C at a $2B valuation) from some of the most prominent VC funds and investors including Accel, NEA, 8VC, and Valar. With a managing team that includes Epirus’ founding members (responsible for building a $1.5B company from scratch) + key drivers from Palantir (instrumental in Palantir’s growth to $1B in revenue), we are well-positioned to become one of the fastest growing companies to date!

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.

#LI-onsite