Senior Counsel, Artificial Intelligence & Data Privacy

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The Senior Counsel, Artificial Intelligence & Data Privacy will lead and advise on global data protection and AI governance across the global jurisdictions in which AECOM operates, ensuring compliance with international privacy laws and emerging AI regulation, mitigating legal risk and supporting responsible innovation.

The role is also the embedded legal partner to AECOM's AI Engineering teams located across Europe. It helps those teams develop and deploy AI-driven products quickly while protecting AECOM's intellectual property, its clients and the people whose data it handles, giving clear, practical answers and streamlining the legal review and compliance process.

The postholder will be the gateway and quarterback between the AI teams and the wider global AECOM legal team, and a senior, business-facing partner to leaders across the business. A cultural fit with the AI teams is essential, and a technology or product background is valued.

1. Lead product counsel embedded within AI development teams

- Act as the embedded legal partner to the AI Engineering teams across the whole product lifecycle, managing legal design and compliance issues, and making pragmatic, risk-based calls rather than adding process.

- Build self-service playbooks, decision guides, standard templates and pre-approved positions so that engineers and product teams can get most answers without waiting for legal review.

- Support product launches into new markets with fast, risk-based guidance on local legal requirements, product terms and AI transparency obligations.

- Advise on the IP position of AI development, including rights to training data, model and dataset licenses, open-weight model license terms (use restrictions and attribution), open-source software compliance, and ownership of AI-generated outputs.

- Protect clients' confidential information and IP by setting clear rules for how client construction information may be used, including for model training and fine-tuning, and ensuring product behavior matches AECOM's contractual commitments.

- Provide generalized legal support to the AI teams, including review & negotiation of vendor and other commercial agreements, contracts, and provide advice and counsel on general legal matters where needed.

- Act as gateway and quarterback between the AI teams and the wider global legal team: bring in the right internal specialists, leadership at all levels, and external counsel across jurisdictions, and keep spend proportionate to the risk.

- Guide the legal team and senior stakeholders on privacy, AI governance and regulatory developments, and give strategic advice on integrating privacy and AI compliance into product development and operations.

- Lead and coordinate legal professionals within the AECOM legal function with full or partial responsibility for related tasks and deliverables.

Requirements

A senior, experienced, qualified lawyer, with a law degree and admission in a relevant jurisdiction.; Deep knowledge of GDPR, UK GDPR and US privacy laws, with experience of cross-border data transfers, and of emerging AI regulatory frameworks such as the EU AI Act and how they apply to products in practice.; Deep expertise in intellectual property and technology commercial work, including software, data and technology licensing, SaaS, enterprise client and vendor agreements, and open-source licence compliance.; Hands-on experience advising on AI products, including training data rights, model licensing and AI-specific contract terms.; Strong drafting, negotiation and advisory skills.; Ability to manage complex, cross-border projects and orchestrate legal support across multiple jurisdictions, working with in-house specialists and external counsel, and to communicate effectively with senior stakeholders.; A track record of working at pace in fast-moving product or engineering teams, explaining legal risk clearly and pragmatically, and giving straight answers that enable delivery rather than block it. A technology or product background is valued, and a cultural fit with the AI teams is needed.; Experience in a large global organization, working across regions, business units and enterprise governance and compliance processes.

Nice to have

Certifications such as CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, IAPP AIGP or other AI governance credentials.; Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.; Experience with patent strategy for software or machine learning inventions.; Familiarity with the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector, including how design and construction information is owned and licensed.; Technical literacy in how machine learning models and LLMs are trained, fine-tuned and deployed, including the difference between hosted and self-hosted models.