Legal Director

Join us as we scale our business by building on our tremendous success around the world. The massive database market is going to double over the next few years and TiDB is a global player positioned as a major disruptor with TiDB Database and Database as a Service offering. TiDB is an open-source, cloud-native, distributed SQL database for elastic scale and real-time analytics. Large and high-growth organizations in markets as varied as financial services, logistics, gaming, e-commerce and software as a service have successfully deployed and expanded their TiDB footprint on mission-critical applications. Our strong open-source community roots (39,500+ stars on GitHub), innovative products and inclusive culture draw passionate and dedicated people to our company. Learn more about TiDB careers and join our team to be at the forefront of innovation and growth.

***This position requires candidates to be located in the West Coast time zone.***

Role Overview:

TiDB is seeking an exceptional Legal Director to architect, scale, and operationalize the company’s global legal infrastructure. This senior leadership role focuses on building long-term global systems, legal workflows, scalable contracting processes, and cross-functional compliance readiness—not providing routine transactional support. The Legal Director will serve as the senior-most legal leader for the global business, providing high-level commercial guidance where needed while building global legal programs, automation, and governance structures aligned with TiDB’s hyper-growth, product evolution, and future public-company readiness.

Responsibilities:

Global Commercial Leadership & Complex Transactions

• Lead negotiations for high-value, complex, or escalated global SaaS and infrastructure agreements (>$1M).
• Negotiate and structure hyperscaler agreements (AWS, Azure, GCP), cloud marketplace listings, strategic partnerships, and open-core monetization models.
• As the senior legal leader supporting global business, provide commercial contracting support for matters requiring senior-level legal judgment—including escalated, non-standard, or cross-border deals.
• Design contracting systems, including templates, playbooks, fallback logic, and automated workflows that reduce the need for manual review for standard agreements.

Global Regulatory & Compliance Governance

• Manage and harmonize simultaneous multi-region compliance obligations (GDPR, CCPA and other data privacy regulations), including AI governance, cloud-native regulations, and distributed data models.
• Build scalable global governance frameworks, compliance programs, and cross-border data protection mechanisms.

Strategic Legal Infrastructure & IPO Readiness

• Architect the global legal operating model, including AI-enabled contract automation, self-service tooling, and scalable workflow processes.
• Contribute to TiDB’s long-term IPO-readiness initiatives, helping mature governance, documentation, compliance controls, and legal systems aligned with public-company standards.
• Partner with Finance, HR, Product, Sales, Security, and Engineering on cross-functional processes and internal control frameworks.

Product, Engineering & Open-Source Partnership

• Co-design data product terms, implement legal safeguards within product workflows, and ensure compliance with open-source licensing and hybrid cloud/on-premise deployment models.
• Support new business models (consumption-based pricing, distributed systems, cloud-native GTM motions).

Leadership, Collaboration & Global Operations

• Operate as the senior legal stakeholder for global business, collaborating closely with Asia-based R&D and global commercial leadership.
• Mentor emerging legal and operational partners; support a “follow-the-sun” legal operations model.
• Provide competitive intelligence and strategic legal insights to executive leadership.

Risk Management & Incident Response

• Resolve high-severity, multi-jurisdictional incidents with speed and precision.
• Build early-warning systems, escalation processes, and global incident-response frameworks.
• Perform additional duties and responsibilities as required to support the needs of the business.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of progressive legal experience in SaaS, cloud infrastructure, or enterprise technology.
• Proven expertise negotiating complex enterprise agreements, hyperscaler contracts, and open-core licensing structures.
• Proven experience of managing legal teams in international IT companies
• Strong multi-region compliance experience (U.S., EMEA, APAC).
• Fluency in cloud economics, distributed systems, and consumption-based GTM models.
• Demonstrated ability to implement legal automation, AI tools, and operational scaling.
• Experience partnering with Product, Engineering, and Commercial leadership.
• Crisis and incident management experience across jurisdictions.
• Ability to operate independently as the senior-most regional legal leader.
• Active U.S. bar membership.

The annual anticipated base salary range for U.S. candidates for this role is USD $195,000 to $275,000K. Four zones are applied with different levels of the pay range. More details of the Geo Differential Pay Policy will be discussed during the HR conversation. The actual individual base pay will depend on various factors such as the complexity and responsibility of the role, work locations, job levels, and relevant experience and skills. This role is also eligible to participate in TiDB's Bonus and Equity Plan, as well as our Sales Compensation Plan if it is a sales role. In order to comply with local legislation and provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base salary ranges on all US job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Please note that actual salaries may vary and fall outside of this range depending on factors such as a candidate's qualifications, geographic location, skills, experience, and competencies. Other benefits include health insurance, flexible vacation time, paid holidays, and parental leave. Salaries for candidates outside the U.S. will vary based on local compensation structures.

We encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply. Come advance with us! In keeping with our values, no employee or applicant will face discrimination/harassment based on: race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, gender, marital domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, or veteran status. TiDB also strives to prevent other, subtler forms of inappropriate behavior (e.g., stereotyping) from ever gaining a foothold in our organization. Whether blatant or hidden, barriers to success have no place at TiDB.