In-House Counsel
Location: Salt Lake City, UT (in-office, hybrid)
Hours: Full-time; Salaried
Manager: Founders
The Role
Zanskar is at a pivotal inflection point. As we scale our geothermal development pipeline, we are consolidating legal work that has largely been managed through outside counsel into a focused, high-leverage in-house function. We are seeking an In-House Counsel to be a trusted legal partner to the Co-founders and leadership team—translating legal and regulatory risk into practical decisions that help the company move with speed and discipline.
As Zanskar’s first in-house legal leader, you will lead day-to-day legal work across corporate governance, financing, project development, commercial contracting, public policy, employment, intellectual property, compliance, and real property. You will help make our projects financeable, strengthen how we make decisions and manage risk, and lay the groundwork for a legal function that can grow with the company. As Zanskar grows, we expect this role to grow with it.
What You’ll Do: • Legal Partnership: Be a responsive, practical legal resource to the Co-founders and leadership team on day-to-day decisions, flagging enterprise-level risk and looping in outside counsel or the leadership team on the highest-stakes calls.
- Support Bankability: Help structure and negotiate project development, construction, financing, tax, offtake, interconnection, and other critical agreements so projects can meet lender and investor diligence standards.
- Project Development: Support legal work across mineral and surface rights, site control, land use, permitting, environmental review (including NEPA and CEQA where applicable), and federal, state, and local regulatory matters. Anticipate issues early and help development teams maintain momentum.
- Team Building (Humans + Agents): Help design a forward-thinking legal department. You will be expected to aggressively utilize AI and automation to handle high-volume workflows, keeping the internal team lean and high-leverage.
- Outside Counsel Management: Help manage outside-counsel strategy, selection, scope, budgets, performance, and knowledge transfer. Match work to the right provider, hold firms accountable for commercial advice and cost, and bring repeatable work in-house when it creates leverage. Who You Are: • Experienced: You are an attorney in good standing and eligible for admission or registration in Utah, with meaningful experience in an in-house role — or as outside counsel with direct accountability to business clients — at a high-growth company, energy or infrastructure business, independent power producer, project developer, or similarly complex organization. Exposure to project finance, bankability, or energy development is a strong plus, though we're equally interested in strong generalists ready to grow into the space.
- Sound Judgment: You know how to distinguish real risk from noise, and you're comfortable giving clear, practical advice, including when the answer is "no", while knowing when to escalate.
- Operationally Modern: You use legal technology, data, and automation thoughtfully to improve speed, consistency, and insight—without compromising confidentiality, privilege, or professional judgment.
- Builder Mentality: You are comfortable starting from scratch or building on our existing processes and moving between higher-level advice and more detailed execution. You create fit-for-stage structures and controls rather than importing process for its own sake.
- Mission-Driven: You are energized by Zanskar’s mission and by a high-volume, first-of-kind environment where no two weeks look the same. You bring sound judgment, curiosity, and resilience to problems that may not have an established playbook.
- Commercial Instinct: You translate legal risk into clear options and help teams reach durable decisions. You know when to move quickly, when to escalate, and when the company needs an unambiguous no. About Zanskar: Zanskar is a team of mission-oriented professionals who live by the value “Every Boot on the Ground.” We build new AI tools to discover the geothermal resources needed to provide carbon-free, baseload power to the world. We then turn those discoveries into power plants and operate them. We work on problems no one else has solved before, and we are looking for a General Counsel to help us clear the path. What Zanskar Offers: • Direct access to the Co-founders and leadership team and real influence over how we shape and grow the legal function from here.
- A clear growth path: as the company and its legal needs scale, we expect this role and its scope to growth with it.
- Equity upside in a company at an early stage of what we believe is a very large market.
- The opportunity to shape the legal function—its processes, systems, external partnerships, and team—from the ground up in a way that reflects your vision of what great looks like.
- Work that matters! Geothermal is one of the most compelling solutions to firm clean power and Zanskar is at the frontier of it.
- A team that takes the mission seriously without taking itself too seriously.
- $170,000–$250,000 base salary + equity. We believe in transparency and will discuss the full compensation picture early in the process.
- Relocation support is available for the right candidate. This role is in-office in Salt Lake City and we are serious about that — but we are equally serious about finding the right person and will invest in making the move work.