Senior Counsel, AI & Data Privacy

Description

Do you want to be the lawyer AI engineers come to first, not last?

AECOM is building AI products that are changing how the world’s infrastructure gets designed and built. We’re looking for a Senior Counsel, AI & Data Privacy, to sit inside our AI Engineering teams in Europe and lead privacy and AI governance across AECOM’s global markets.

The role has two halves. Day to day, you’ll be the embedded legal partner to our AI teams: making practical, risk-based calls so good products ship quickly and safely. You’ll also shape how AECOM handles privacy and responsible AI around the world, working with our global legal team and senior leaders.

What you’ll do

• Be the embedded product counsel for our AI Engineering teams across the whole lifecycle, giving straight answers that help teams deliver.
• Build playbooks, decision guides and pre-approved positions so engineers can get most answers without waiting for a legal review.
• Advise on the IP side of AI: rights to training data, model and dataset licences, open-weight and open-source terms, and who owns AI-generated outputs.
• Set clear rules for how client design and construction information may be used, including for model training and fine-tuning.
• Advise on GDPR, UK GDPR, US state privacy laws and other global regimes, covering lawful basis, DPIAs, cross-border transfers and data residency.
• Turn the EU AI Act and other emerging AI rules into practical requirements that teams build into how they work.
• Review and negotiate vendor, licensing and commercial technology agreements.
• Coordinate between the AI teams and AECOM’s global legal function, bringing in internal specialists and outside counsel when needed and keeping spend proportionate to the risk.
• Run privacy and responsible-AI training, and represent AECOM in regulatory inquiries.

What you’ll bring

• Qualification as a lawyer in a relevant jurisdiction.
• Deep knowledge of GDPR, UK GDPR and US privacy law, and of how the EU AI Act applies to real products.
• Strong IP and technology commercial experience: software and data licensing, SaaS, client and vendor agreements, and open-source compliance.
• Hands-on experience advising on AI products, including training data rights, model licensing and AI contract terms.
• A track record of working at pace with product or engineering teams, and of explaining risk clearly and pragmatically.
• Experience coordinating legal work across several jurisdictions inside a large global organisation.

Nice to have

• CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM or IAPP AIGP certification.
• An understanding of how ML models and LLMs are trained, fine-tuned and deployed, including hosted versus self-hosted models.
• Experience in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector.
• Experience with patent strategy for software or machine learning.