Legal Ops Senior Manager
About the Company
Valon is building the AI-native operating system for regulated finance, starting with mortgage servicing.
We're a Series C company backed by a16z, transforming industries that others have written off as too complex to innovate.
Rather than build on top of broken legacy systems, we took a different approach: we built and operate our own mortgage servicing business managing $110+ billion in loans. This wasn't the end goal, it was how we deeply understood the complexity needed to build software that actually works in regulated industries.
The results speak for themselves. We've transformed mortgage servicing from a 0% margin business into 60%+ margins while dramatically improving customer experience. Major enterprise contracts are now deploying across the industry.
ValonOS is our unified platform that makes every process structured and programmable and it is perfectly positioned for the AI era. When everything flows through one system with rich data, AI agents don't just automate tasks, they continuously improve entire operations. Mortgage servicing is just the beginning of our vision to transform regulated industries and beyond.
About the Role
Valon is building ValonOS, the AI-native operating system for regulated finance. We're rebuilding Legal the same way and, as our first hire in Legal Operations, you own the systems, processes, and AI workflows that let a small legal team support a fast-growing, highly regulated business — from contract operations to retention, from policy infrastructure to compliance program management. You're the architect and operator of Legal's operating layer, and the internal partner who aligns Legal with Finance, Sales, Engineering, Product, IT, and People so legal processes integrate cleanly with how the business actually runs.
This is a builder role. Most of the infrastructure you'll own doesn't exist yet, and you'll have meaningful input into how this function is scoped, what it owns, and how it grows from here. The systems you stand up will define how Legal scales as we spin off our origination business and continue rolling out ValonOS to enterprise customers.
What You'll Do
Own legal intake and triage. Design how legal requests come in, get prioritized, routed, and tracked. Make Legal's queue visible across relevant stakeholders and shrink the gap between "I have a legal question" and "I have an answer."
Run compliance program operations. Maintain our regulatory compliance infrastructure, including intake and triage of regulatory changes related to our product, and keep us audit-ready as the regulatory surface area grows.
Rebuild contract operations. Create a contract lifecycle workflow — vendor agreements, commercial sales, customer SaaS, integration agreements — structured so AI can read, query, and surface obligations. Track renewals, key dates, and surviving obligations proactively.
Run policy and approvals. Consolidate our policy library across systems, run periodic review cycles, and automate the mechanics of approvals, sign-offs, and version control.
Implement and operate the data retention program. Translate retention principles into working systems across our platform. Drive the cross-functional rollout with IT, Engineering, and People.
Build Legal's AI infrastructure. Develop and maintain the Claude skills, Notion structures, scripts, and integrations that the team uses day to day. When a manual workflow can be automated, you build the automation.
Drive audits, due diligence, and regulatory exams. Be the operational point person who pulls together what's needed quickly — investor diligence, GSE reviews (Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie), and customer compliance audits.
Codify the playbook. Templates, runbooks, intake scripts, training materials. Build the assets that make the next ten things easier than the last.
What Success Looks Like
Process. Legal work is organized through structured intake, triage, and tracking without slowing down the business.
Structure. Contracts, policies, opinions and other critical legal documents live in systems that the team and AI can both query effectively.
Automation. Recurring work runs itself; the team's time goes to judgment, not maintenance.
Scale. We're not rebuilding in eighteen months because it didn't scale, and the function itself is set up to grow as the work does.
Qualifications
4–7 years in legal operations, paralegal work with significant in-house exposure, or operations work embedded inside a legal team. We strongly prefer candidates who have built systems from scratch over candidates who have maintained mature ones.
AI fluency. You use AI tools daily and build durable workflows around them — not just chat with them. You can structure data so AI can use it, write prompts that hold up at scale, call APIs, and stitch tools together. If you've never built a Claude skill, written a Notion automation, or pulled data through an API, this is probably not the right role.
Systems instinct. You see ad hoc work and immediately want to build the structure that makes it repeatable.
Initiative. You're as ready to scope what you and the company need to do as you are to execute on your plans.
Sharp judgment on when to escalate, when to say no, and how to scope to the minimum viable path.
Project management discipline. You scope, communicate clearly, close loops, and don't need to be told twice.
Self-direction. You'll join a small, senior legal team in the middle of a corporate restructuring; you'll own outcomes and ship without heavy supervision.
Clear, concise communication. You can translate legal for engineers and operations for lawyers.
High discretion. You'll have visibility into highly sensitive matters from day one.
Preferred Backgrounds
Legal operations, program management, paralegal, or chief-of-staff work inside a high-growth technology or fintech company.
Exposure to regulated environments — financial services, mortgage, healthcare, or similar.
Hands-on experience administering a CLM platform (Ironclad, Brightflag, Ivo, Luminance) — though we're tool-agnostic and will choose what fits.
Prior compliance or regulatory operations work.
Fluency with Notion, Slack workflows, Google Workspace, e-signature, and standard project/issue trackers.
Throughout the interview process, please remember that emails will only be from valon.com email addresses. We will never ask for any personally identifiable information during the interview process itself. Please reach out to [email protected] if you have any requests to verify the authenticity of an outreach.
Valon is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws. Valon makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.