Sebana
Energy Infrastructure Built For Tomorrow

Corporate Counsel - Part-Time

 

Corporate Counsel, Part-Time

Sebana | New York, NY / Remote Eligible | Part-Time Salaried - W-2 | sebana.co

About Sebana

Sebana is a developer of small and medium-scale battery energy storage and microgrid infrastructure, focused on New York State and the Northeast.

We are a small team - currently two people - and an early-stage company (founded in 2024). We are hiring our first dedicated legal role to help us build disciplined, practical legal support as the business grows.

The Role

This is a part-time corporate counsel role at an early-stage energy infrastructure company. We are looking for a lawyer who wants to work as part of the business, close to the contracts, decisions, and commercial realities that shape it. You will take over and improve the contract work currently handled internally, expanding what Sebana can handle in-house and developing practical ways to handle recurring work.

While the heart of the job is legal, the role is deliberately broader, which means more variety, more context, and a hand in the business decisions themselves.

The work will touch energy regulation, utility programs, compliance, and project development in a regulated market. We do not expect you to have seen most of the energy-specific issues before, but we do expect strong commercial judgment, careful research habits, and good instincts for when an answer needs to be validated by specialist counsel.

AI is an important part of how we work. We have found it very useful for first-pass contract review, issue spotting, drafting alternatives, and research support. We expect this person to use AI as an active professional multiplier while applying attorney judgment, verification, and confidentiality discipline.

This is designed as a durable part-time internal role with a long-term fit in mind. We want someone who can become a trusted legal partner to the business, with context that makes the work more interesting, faster-moving, and higher-impact over time.

What You'll Do

In your first months:

  • Understand our business, current project pipeline, active legal needs, and how legal work is currently handled
  • Begin taking over day-to-day contract review and drafting where appropriate
  • Identify practical places to make the work easier, faster, or higher-quality

Ongoing core responsibilities:

  • Draft, review, and negotiate commercial, real estate, procurement, vendor, service provider, equipment supply, and development-related agreements
  • Help the team understand legal risk and commercial tradeoffs in a way that fits the stage and economics of the business
  • Improve drafting of form documents where it is likely to be high leverage
  • Experiment with AI and legal technology for contract review, drafting, research support, and practical workflow improvements
  • Use and manage outside counsel efficiently to achieve high-quality outcomes
  • Tackle business objectives adjacent to your legal scope where your skills are a fit, for example helping the business navigate energy regulations, utility programs, tariff and revenue-program analysis, compliance obligations, permitting, the development process, and risk allocation

Scope and focus: We will shape weekly priorities around the highest-leverage uses of the agreed part-time schedule, so the broader business scope makes the role more interesting and useful without crowding out its focus or flexibility.

Who We're Looking For

Desired Qualifications:

  • J.D. and active bar admission in good standing in New York, or active admission in good standing in another U.S. jurisdiction with eligibility and willingness to register promptly as in-house counsel in New York and satisfy any comparable authorization required where you perform legal services
  • 5+ years of legal experience, with meaningful experience drafting and negotiating commercial agreements directly with counterparties
  • In-house legal experience strongly preferred
  • Experience with energy, infrastructure, real estate, construction, project finance, regulated industries, or startups is helpful but not required
  • Eagerness to experiment with modern legal technology and AI tools to make legal work easier, while applying independent legal judgment and verification
  • Self-directed working style: able to identify risks and drafting holes, propose drafting approaches, and move negotiations forward
  • Interest in a durable, long-term part-time role and in learning the business deeply enough to do practical, context-aware work

Working style: This role will suit a practical commercial generalist — someone who can tell which questions need deep legal analysis and which just need a sensible answer, is comfortable doing both the senior and the hands-on parts of the work, and is glad to pick up problems across the business where their judgment is useful.

Compensation and Employment Terms

  • Part-time salary: Approximately $85,000-$130,000 per year, based on agreed weekly hours and experience
  • Expected time commitment: 15-20 hours per week, to be agreed in advance
  • Employment model: W-2 part-time salaried employee
  • Outside work: We understand this is a part-time role. Because it involves confidential legal and business matters, we will ask candidates to disclose any outside employment, legal practice, consulting, board/advisory role, or other compensated work, and to avoid outside work that conflicts with Sebana's interests, confidentiality obligations, availability expectations, or professional-responsibility requirements.
  • Benefits / PTO: This is a part-time role (20 hours per week or less) and is not expected to include company-sponsored health insurance. Statutory benefits required by law (such as paid sick leave and any applicable state paid-leave programs) will be provided based on your work location. Any additional paid time off or company benefits will depend on the final schedule and offer terms.

Schedule

We expect this role to offer meaningful flexibility within a regular weekly cadence. It is not intended to be purely as-needed work with long gaps between touchpoints; part of the value of the role is staying close enough to the business to help as legal and business needs come up.

We'll set a regular baseline schedule, with availability spread across most of the week. The specific days, timing, and hours can then shift by mutual agreement - for example, to accommodate a larger time-sensitive project or personal commitments.

Location

This role is remote eligible. Sebana is based in lower Manhattan by Chambers St., and most of our work is focused on New York State and the Northeast. Remote candidates will have occasional opportunities to work with the team in person, but regular in-person attendance is not required.

How to Apply

Send your resume to careers@sebana.co. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sebana is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, alienage or citizenship status, disability status, marital or partnership status, caregiver status, unemployment status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States and to provide in-house legal services to Sebana in applicable jurisdictions.

Note to recruiters: We do not pay placement fees to agencies or recruiters who have not been engaged by Sebana in writing for a specific search.