Commercial Counsel, Datacenters & Construction

Commercial Counsel, Datacenters & Construction
About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

As a Commercial Counsel for Datacenters & Construction at Anthropic, you'll lead legal execution for Anthropic's largest physical infrastructure transactions: direct datacenter leases, construction agreements, and the financing structures that enable infrastructure investments at massive scale. This role focuses on facilities where Anthropic has direct control through ownership or long-term lease, complementing the colo & networks, and cloud compute legal teammates (facilities where Anthropic is tenant, and our hyperscaler relationships, respectively).

You'll work in close partnership with specialized outside counsel on financing and real estate matters, serving as the in-house coordinator who ensures external work product aligns with Anthropic's commercial objectives and integrates with our overall compute strategy.

• Negotiate long-term datacenter leases with major developers, and represent some of Anthropic's largest and lengthiest capital commitments
• Support and structure power purchase agreements, negotiate utility interconnection agreements, and manage utility-related legal requirements or initiatives e.g., renewables
• Coordinate construction-adjacent agreements including design-build contracts, equipment procurement, and commissioning schedules
• Manage legal work streams for complex financing structures (e.g., sale-leasebacks, tax components, or project finance vehicles)
• Work closely with specialized outside counsel (real estate and financing specialists), ensuring their work product aligns with Anthropic's commercial objectives
• Collaborate with compute team’s transaction managers who handle operational execution and project management, providing legal and risk management expertise
• Coordinate with finance and corporate development on strategic deal structuring
• Understand how datacenter legal structures interact with the compute capacity they will house e.g., power requirements, cooling specifications, security standards, and expansion rights all flow from decisions made elsewhere in the Compute organization
• Escalate novel structures or terms that create downstream risk for Anthropic’s operational flexibility to managers; ensure facility designs accommodate AI-specific requirements including high-density power, liquid cooling infrastructure, and rapid scaling capacity

• JD and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar
• At least 8 years of relevant legal experience with meaningful exposure to project finance, construction contracts, or infrastructure real estate transactions
• Fluency in commercial real estate and construction contracting; datacenter lease structures, construction risk allocation, and financing arrangements (and how they will interact)
• Experience with EPC, AIA, and design-build arrangements at scale
• Comfort with project finance structures and the interplay between lease, financing, and development agreements
• Ability to coordinate effectively with specialized outside counsel while maintaining strategic direction
• Strong judgment about when deal terms create downstream risk for operational flexibility
• Effective collaboration skills for working with business teams who handle transaction management and site selection
• Communication skills that translate complex real estate and financing concepts into clear risk assessments for business stakeholders
• Genuine interest in infrastructure development and appreciation for why datacenter capacity is mission‑critical for frontier AI

• In‑house experience at datacenter developers supporting leasing, project development, and financing transactions
• Background at infrastructure private equity firms with exposure to datacenter or similar infrastructure investments
• Experience at large technology…