Privacy Counsel
Job description
Beacon is building the essential technology infrastructure for the everyday economy: the businesses, organizations, and services that make real life work, and that mainstream tech has largely left behind. We acquire, operate, and grow vertical market software and services companies: niche, founder-built businesses serving industries that are too specific for the enterprise giants and too profitable to ignore. Our model is simple. We buy great businesses, invest in their continued growth, and hold them permanently. We are not a financial firm. We are technology entrepreneurs and operators who believe the most important businesses in the world are already running quietly in industries most people never think about. Our job is to find them, support the people who built them, and make them better. We seek out founders who have built their business by spending years understanding their market and prioritizing their customers' specific needs. Our flexible structure offers entrepreneurs a unique option to implement a transition that ensures the continuity of the company while receiving liquidity at full value for their equity in their business. No mandate to cut, flip, or roll up into something unrecognizable. We are permanent, committed capital with no exit pressure and a long-term time horizon, backed by a diverse base of investors including Wall Street (D1 Capital, CPMG), Silicon Valley (General Catalyst and Lightspeed), the family offices of world-class technology entrepreneurs (including the founders of Stripe, DoorDash, and Ramp), and evergreen funds built for the long game (Sator Grove).
Beacon was founded by Nilam Ganenthiran, entrepreneur, former President of Instacart, and investor at D1 Capital, who has spent his career building, scaling, and backing high-growth technology businesses.
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are seeking a strategic and hands-on Privacy Counsel to join Beacon's legal team as our first dedicated privacy specialist. This is a foundational role: you will build Beacon's privacy strategy and architecture from the ground up, establishing the frameworks, policies, and processes that will govern how Beacon and its growing portfolio of vertical market software companies collect, use, and protect data. Reporting to Beacon's VP, Legal, you will partner closely with our IT, Governance, and Risk leader to architect a privacy program that is robust, scalable, and fit for a multi-jurisdictional technology acquirer. You will own data privacy end-to-end across the deal lifecycle - from pre-acquisition diligence through integration and post-close operations - while also advising on day-to-day privacy matters across the Beacon platform. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role for a privacy lawyer who wants to build something lasting, not just maintain the status quo.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Privacy Program Architecture: Build and own Beacon's enterprise data privacy program from inception. Establish the foundational strategy, governance structure, and operating model for privacy across Beacon and its portfolio companies. Define Beacon's privacy principles and risk appetite, and translate them into practical policies, controls, and accountability structures that can scale as the portfolio grows.
- M&A Privacy Diligence & Integration: Own the data privacy workstream across the full deal lifecycle. Conduct and lead privacy due diligence on acquisition targets - assessing data inventories, consent frameworks, cross-border transfer mechanisms, regulatory exposure, and historical compliance posture. Develop standardized privacy diligence checklists and playbooks. Post-close, lead privacy integration planning and execution, ensuring acquired companies are brought into alignment with Beacon's privacy standards in a structured, risk-based manner.
- Policy, Process & Template Development: Draft, implement, and maintain Beacon's core privacy documentation - including privacy policies, data processing agreements (DPAs), records of processing activities (ROPAs), consent frameworks, data subject rights (DSR) procedures, data retention schedules, and vendor privacy terms. Build a library of reusable templates and precedents that can be deployed efficiently across the portfolio.
- Cross-Functional Partnership: Serve as the primary privacy advisor to Beacon's IT, Governance, and Risk function. Work collaboratively with engineering, product, and operations teams at Beacon and within portfolio companies to embed privacy-by-design principles into technology development, data infrastructure, and business processes. Translate complex regulatory requirements into clear, actionable guidance for non-legal stakeholders.
- Multi-Jurisdictional Compliance: Monitor and advise on compliance with applicable data privacy laws across the jurisdictions in which Beacon and its portfolio companies operate, with particular depth in U.S. federal and state privacy law (including CCPA/CPRA and sector-specific regimes), Canadian federa