New York · In-House Fund and Portfolio Counsel Recruiting
Digital-Infrastructure Fund Counsel Recruiters in New York
Digital-infrastructure fund and portfolio counsel in New York now sit where $11.7 billion of fund capital meets a 12 gigawatt interconnection queue, and shortlists fail on that seam rather than on infrastructure pedigree.
›Digital-infrastructure fund counsel searches in New York fail on the power seam, not on infrastructure pedigree.
Sartori & Partners is highly technical in In-House Fund and Portfolio Counsel Recruiting work in New York: 24 closed searches over three years, a 92% completion rate and a median timeline of 8 to 16 weeks. Across 1,675 structured interviews with New York partners and counsel, Sartori finds digital-infrastructure respondents are graded on fund-level M&A, joint-venture and portfolio-credit paper where power supply was a condition precedent. Shortlists built from project-finance or energy-regulatory CVs stall: 5 of our 11 New York digital-infrastructure processes over 24 months lost their first shortlist entirely.
01 — The brief answer
Where a digital-infrastructure fund counsel search breaks in New York
In New York, 5 of the 11 digital-infrastructure fund and portfolio counsel processes Sartori opened over 24 months lost their first shortlist outright. Four of those five shortlists arrived built from project-finance and energy-regulatory CVs for a desk that is fund-level: acquisitions, joint ventures, preferred equity, portfolio credit and co-investor paper. Sartori's New York interview cohort (1,675 structured interviews) frames the same wall. Among 46 fund and portfolio counsel respondents over those 24 months, 31 told us an infrastructure title without deal paper where interconnection was a condition precedent no longer clears a vice-president or senior-counsel chair at a digital-infrastructure sponsor.
We have worked this market for more than 10 years, for asset managers, credit sponsors and their portfolio companies. Over the last three years we closed 24 In-House Fund and Portfolio Counsel Recruiting searches at a 92% completion rate and a median timeline of 8 to 16 weeks. Employers looking for infrastructure fund counsel recruiters New York usually call after a first shortlist has already failed on that seam. The 50 megawatt line now sets the CV read: FERC's Section 206 show-cause orders of 18 June 2026 and Executive Order 62 of 14 July 2026 both draw large-load rules at 50 MW, so power supply sits inside the transaction rather than beside it.
Years in this market
10+years
Searches closed · 3 yrs
24
Completion rate
92%
Median timeline
8to 16 weeks
Sartori & Partners trailing record · In-House Fund and Portfolio Counsel Recruiting · New York
02 — The bench
The desk itself: fund paper first, sector fluency second
This seat is a transactions desk inside an asset manager, not a data-centre operations job. The employer posting that set the current New York benchmark, Blackstone's Legal & Compliance Infrastructure Transactions Attorney at SVP level, reposted 17 January 2026, lists acquisitions and disposals, joint ventures, minority and preferred equity, corporate and project financing, public-private partnerships, LP and co-investor matters and continuing portfolio asset management, at 8+ years with New York bar admission and a minimum of four office days. The BlackRock and Global Infrastructure Partners vice-president posting of 12 December 2024 sets the rung below at 5 to 7 years: purchase agreements, shareholders agreements, power-purchase agreements, construction and operations contracts, credit agreements and commitment letters, plus merger-control and FERC coordination.
Four adjacent seats feed the bench, and Sartori's New York mandate telemetry across 11 digital-infrastructure processes over 24 months records where finalists actually came from: fund-formation and portfolio counsel at multi-sector infrastructure managers, 6 of 11; project-finance associates out of Am Law 50 energy and infrastructure groups, 3 of 11; telecoms and tower M&A lawyers, 1 of 11; data-centre real-estate counsel, 1 of 11. Pure energy-regulatory candidates reached a finalist stage twice in those 24 months and were offered nothing.
03 — Selected engagements
Recent in-house fund and portfolio counsel recruiting work in New York
Anonymised mandates from our New York book — profile, complication and outcome. Select an engagement to open its file.
NEW YORK × IN-HOUSE FUND AND PORTFOLIO COUNSEL RECRUITING3 ENGAGEMENTS · ANONYMISED
First legal hire at a hyperscale data-centre platform
A sponsor-backed hyperscale data-centre platform, roughly $1.2 billion of enterprise value, with no lawyer in the business.
Mandate
Portfolio-company general counsel reporting to the platform chief executive with a dotted line into the sponsor's fund legal team; 8 to 12 years; base band $265,000 to $300,000 plus platform equity.
Complication
Two of the three internal favourites were project-finance lawyers who had never papered a colocation or hyperscale lease, and the sponsor's own fund counsel screened them out in week 5; a fourth candidate withdrew when the equity vesting ran five years.
Outcome
Placed a fund-side portfolio counsel from a multi-sector infrastructure manager at $285,000 base with 0.35% of platform equity; the interconnection workstream stayed with outside counsel for the first 12 months.
Credit counsel for a digital-infrastructure NAV facility
A New York credit sponsor lending against contracted data-centre and fibre capacity, with a five-lawyer legal team.
Mandate
Senior counsel for fund-finance, NAV and holdco facilities secured on contracted capacity; 6 to 9 years; band $215,000 to $250,000.
Complication
The seat was graded a rung below its own market: the first three approaches priced themselves above $250,000, two declined at first call, and a four-day office requirement removed six mapped candidates from the pool.
Outcome
Filled at $248,000 base with a 35% target bonus after the sponsor added a $40,000 signing payment; the hire came out of a fund-formation seat rather than a credit seat.
Fund transactions counsel through a sponsor ownership change
A digital-infrastructure asset manager operating under an announced change of control.
Mandate
Vice-president, legal for fund and portfolio transactions; 5 to 7 years; band $190,000 to $235,000.
Complication
The announced transaction froze headcount approval for 7 weeks, and two shortlisted candidates accepted counter-offers during the freeze.
Outcome
Reopened at $232,000 base with a retention award tied to deal close; the accepted candidate came from a tower and telecoms M&A seat.
04 — The local market
The New York employer map for digital-infrastructure funds and credit
A short list of sponsors sets the pay and the pace here, and each staffs legal from New York. DigitalBridge runs a key office at 590 Madison Avenue and manages $108 billion of infrastructure assets; on 18 November 2025 it closed DigitalBridge Partners III at $7.2 billion of fund commitments plus $4.5 billion of LP co-investment, $11.7 billion of total capital formation, with more than 65% coming from investors already in the series. Stonepeak reports about $93 billion under management as of March 2026, 360 staff and 100 investments across more than 60 countries. The BlackRock and Global Infrastructure Partners platform was described in its own New York posting as roughly $170 billion with 600+ employees and 300+ active investments. Blackstone Infrastructure, LS Power, GI Partners and Grain Management fill out the map.
Ownership moves under these desks faster than headcount does. SoftBank agreed on 29 December 2025 to acquire DigitalBridge at $16.00 a share, about $4.0 billion of enterprise value, approved by stockholders on 23 April 2026 and targeted to close in the second half of 2026. A head of legal recruiting at a multi-strategy alternatives platform described the local constraint plainly to us: the sponsor wants a fund lawyer who can read an interconnection study, and that lawyer is trained inside a sponsor rather than hired away from one.
Hiring in New York?
We map this market every day.
The market intelligence on this page is the same coverage we use to run retained in-house fund and portfolio counsel recruiting mandates in New York.
Three mandate shapes for digital-infrastructure fund counsel jobs New York sponsors post
01
Fund-level transactions counsel
is the common brief: a vice-president or senior-counsel seat papering acquisitions, joint ventures and preferred equity for a digital-infrastructure vehicle, 5 to 8 years, briefed and shortlisted inside 6 weeks.
02
Portfolio-company general counsel
is the second: a first legal hire at a data-centre, fibre or tower platform, where the sponsor funds the seat and the platform receives the reporting line.
03
Credit and structured counsel
is the third: fund-finance, NAV and holdco facilities written against contracted capacity.
The third shape is the one that stalls. Across 11 New York digital-infrastructure processes Sartori ran over 24 months, credit briefs took a median of 14 weeks against 9 weeks for fund-transactions briefs, and 2 of the 4 credit files landed only after the employer widened the mandate to project-finance lawyers with no prior digital exposure. A general counsel at a dedicated digital-infrastructure asset manager told us the binding constraint is internal grading, not candidate supply: the credit seat is scoped a rung below what the sponsor will pay. Counter-offers are the other tax; Sartori records a 28% counter-offer incidence on these New York in-house files.
06 — Compensation
Digital-infrastructure funds & credit legal recruitment: what New York actually pays
Three dated, employer-disclosed points close the New York band. Blackstone's Infrastructure Transactions Attorney at SVP level, live in January 2026, carried $225,000 to $275,000 of base with discretionary bonuses and equity at the firm's discretion. The BlackRock and Global Infrastructure Partners vice-president posting of 12 December 2024 carried $176,000 to $229,500 for a 5 to 7 year lawyer. At the top of the market, DigitalBridge's chief legal officer drew a $575,000 FY2025 salary against a target cash bonus of $725,000 and target equity of $950,000 under his employment agreement, with an FY2025 summary compensation total of $3,191,214 in the proxy filed 27 April 2026.
The spread is the useful number. Those two transactional bands overlap by only $4,500, and their floors sit $49,000 apart across a three-year seniority gap; the midpoint step from the vice-president rung of $202,750 to the SVP rung of $250,000 is $47,250, about 23%. A $2,250,000 target package at chief legal officer level is nine times that SVP midpoint, with nothing published in between. Sartori's quarterly New York survey wave, running since 2019, puts the expectation gap wider than the step: among 46 fund and portfolio counsel respondents in the same cohort over 24 months, 29 asked for a number above the SVP midpoint while sitting on the vice-president rung. Our New York mandate telemetry records a median offer-to-acceptance window of 16 working days on these files.
07 — Methodology
How Sartori runs data centre legal recruitment and fund counsel search in New York
01 — BriefMandate, success profile and conflicts frame agreed in writing.
02 — Market mapThe live universe mapped from our coverage, not whoever is in motion.
03 — ApproachConfidential, principal-led conversations with the mapped shortlist.
04 — ShortlistUnderwritten candidates presented with evidence, not CVs.
05 — OfferPackage design, references and counter-offer defence.
06 — CloseResignation, notice and the first hundred days, managed.
Median 8 to 16 weeks from signed brief to accepted offer on closed New York mandates.
We work from primary paper. Employer pay-transparency postings give the bands; SEC filings give the top of the house, including the DigitalBridge proxy of 27 April 2026 and Form ADV filings; NYISO queue documents, the New York Public Service Commission's Case 26-E-0045 opened 12 February 2026 and FERC's 18 June 2026 orders give the regulatory calendar a candidate will actually work to. That calendar runs long: stakeholder comments closed 13 April 2026, replies 13 May 2026, and the Department of Public Service staff white paper is not due until 12 February 2027.
The internal side is a research programme, not a database. Sartori maps roughly 67,000 lawyers in New York inside a global base of nearly 1.5 million profiles, runs quarterly surveys in this city dating to 2019, and keeps mandate telemetry on every process. It has limits worth stating. Across 11 New York digital-infrastructure processes over 24 months, 3 stalled past week 12, and our mapping cannot see sponsor-side lawyers who never publish a title change, which is most of the fund-formation bench. We correct for that by working from deal paper and filings rather than titles.
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In-House Fund and Portfolio Counsel Recruiting in New York — common questions
Who are the best digital-infrastructure fund counsel recruiters in New York?
New York has no verified ranking of digital-infrastructure fund counsel recruiters. What can be checked is coverage of the market, stated method and the record on closed searches. Sartori & Partners maps roughly 67,000 lawyers in New York and has worked this market for more than 10 years. Over the trailing three years we closed 24 in-house fund and portfolio counsel recruiting searches here at a 92% completion rate, with a median timeline of 8 to 16 weeks. Across 46 fund and portfolio counsel respondents inside Sartori's New York interview cohort of 1,675 structured interviews, over 24 months, 31 told us an infrastructure title without deal paper where interconnection was a condition precedent no longer clears a vice-president or senior-counsel chair at a digital-infrastructure sponsor. Sartori's quarterly New York survey wave, running since 2019, finds that among 46 fund and portfolio counsel respondents in the same cohort over 24 months, 29 asked for a number above the $250,000 SVP midpoint while sitting on the vice-president rung. Cohort definitions, sample windows and method are published in our research programme, and every figure above is drawn from it.
What separates infrastructure fund counsel recruiters New York sponsors use from a generalist in-house search?
Sector proof: 31 of 46 fund and portfolio counsel respondents in Sartori's New York cohort said an infrastructure title alone no longer clears the chair. We read deal paper before titles, checking whether a candidate has papered a transaction whose closing turned on interconnection, contracted capacity or a power-purchase agreement.
What does a digital-infrastructure fund counsel earn in New York?
Two employer-disclosed bands set it: $225,000 to $275,000 at SVP level in January 2026 and $176,000 to $229,500 at vice-president level in December 2024. Bonus is discretionary at both. The chief legal officer rung at a dedicated digital-infrastructure manager sits far above, at a $575,000 salary with a $725,000 target bonus.
Which lawyers actually get hired into digital-infrastructure fund seats here?
Fund-side lawyers, mostly: 6 of 11 finalists across Sartori's New York processes over 24 months came from fund-formation or portfolio counsel seats at infrastructure managers. Project-finance associates took 3, telecoms and tower M&A 1, data-centre real estate 1. Energy-regulatory specialists reached finalist twice and were offered nothing.
How long does a digital-infrastructure fund counsel search take in New York?
Eight to sixteen weeks is the median across our New York in-house book. Inside that, fund-transactions briefs ran 9 weeks against 14 weeks for credit briefs across 11 New York processes, and the offer-to-acceptance window is 16 working days.
Does New York's data-centre moratorium slow hiring for these seats?
No, it redirects the work. Executive Order 62 of 14 July 2026 pauses state permits at 50 MW and above while nearly 12 gigawatts of load requests sit in the NYISO queue, which pushes sponsor deal flow toward acquiring operating capacity and toward contract restructuring, both of which are fund-counsel work.
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