Applied AI Engineer, Public Sector
Anthropic
$280,000 - $320,000 / year
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Description
About Anthropic
Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.
About the role
As a member of the Applied AI team at Anthropic, you will be an Applied AI Engineer supporting a dedicated national security mission program. You will be the customer's trusted technical advisor, working closely with their engineering and mission teams as they build and ship new capabilities powered by Claude: advising on architecture design decisions, developing evaluation frameworks, and guiding them through the most cutting-edge implementation patterns for LLMs.
Working closely with our Sales, Product, and Engineering teams, you'll guide the customer from technical discovery through successful deployment, much of it on-site in secure environments. You'll combine deep engineering expertise and cyber domain knowledge with customer-facing skills to help the customer unlock the full potential of Claude and move their mission capabilities closer to the frontier, while maintaining our high standards for safety and reliability.
Responsibilities
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Serve as a specialist technical advisor for one or more national security mission programs, from discovery and evaluation through deployment and adoption, coordinating internally across multiple teams to drive customer success
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Support the customer as they build with Claude Code, the Claude API, and Claude for Enterprise
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Partner with account executives and Applied AI Architects to translate mission requirements into technical solutions
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Influence technical architecture decisions and integration into the customer's existing stack by developing customized pilots, prototypes, and evaluation suites
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Help develop evaluation frameworks to measure Claude's performance for mission-specific use cases
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Lead hands-on technical workshops and code reviews with customer engineering teams
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Identify common design patterns and contribute insights back to our Product and Engineering teams
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Create and deliver technical content, from engineering deep dives to executive briefings
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Maintain strong knowledge of the latest developments in LLM capabilities, implementation patterns, and AI product development stacks
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Work primarily on-site with the customer's engineering and mission teams in secure government facilities, while maintaining close internal coordination and feedback with Anthropic's Applied AI and Engineering teams
Minimum qualifications
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Active TS/SCI clearance with Polygraph
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Prior experience working within US intelligence community agencies as a government civilian or cleared contractor
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4+ years of experience in technical roles such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Product Engineer, Software Engineer, or Technical Product Manager, with a desire to work closely with customers
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Strong programming skills with proficiency in Python or TypeScript and experience building production applications
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Hands-on expertise in one or more of the following domains:
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Offensive or defensive cyber operations (including vulnerability research, reverse engineering, and ICS/OT security)
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Cryptography and cryptanalysis
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Intelligence analysis and ISR (all-source, SIGINT, GEOINT)
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Mission and weapons systems (command and control, space, electronic warfare, autonomy)
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CBRN and nonproliferation
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Accreditation of classified systems (RMF, ATO, cross-domain solutions)
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Exceptional communication skills to convey technical concepts to diverse stakeholders, from engineers to executives, while maintaining a low ego and collaborative approach
Preferred qualifications
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Production experience with LLMs, including advanced prompt engineering, agent development and frameworks, evaluation frameworks, transcript analysis, MCP, and deployment at scale
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Experience deploying and operating software in air-gapped or classified environments
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Experience designing scalable cloud architectures and integrating with enterprise systems
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Background in artificial intelligence, machine learning, or data science
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Ability to navigate ambiguity and execute across domains with intellectual openness, finding simple solutions to complex problems
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High cooperation mindset for cross-organizational collaboration, balancing competing priorities with integrity
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Passion for advancing safe, beneficial AI systems through creative technical applications
Deadline to apply: None. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.
For sales roles, the range provided is the role's On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.
The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.
For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.
Logistics
Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.
Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.
Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.
How we're different
We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.
The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.
Come work with us!
Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.
Benefits
- stock options
- parental leave
About this role
Anthropic is seeking an Applied AI Engineer to serve as the technical backbone for a national security mission program, working directly with government customers to architect and deploy Claude-powered capabilities in classified environments. You'll split your time between secure on-site facilities and Anthropic's offices, acting as both trusted advisor and hands-on builder—translating mission requirements into technical solutions, designing evaluation frameworks, and guiding customers through production implementation of large language models. This role demands someone who can move fluidly between deep technical work (Python/TypeScript development, system architecture, LLM deployment) and high-level strategy conversations with mission leaders and executives.
The position requires an active TS/SCI clearance and prior experience as a cleared contractor or government civilian within the intelligence community. You'll need at least four years in technical roles like Forward Deployed Engineer or Product Engineer, plus hands-on expertise in at least one specialized domain—whether cyber operations, cryptography, intelligence analysis, weapons systems, or classified system accreditation. Strong programming fundamentals are essential, as is the ability to communicate complex AI concepts across audiences ranging from engineers to senior leadership.
This is a contract role based in Washington, DC, with compensation of $280,000–$320,000 annually. Preferred experience includes production work with LLMs, deployment in air-gapped systems, cloud architecture design, and a background in AI or machine learning, though the core requirement is demonstrated technical depth in your domain and the ability to collaborate across organizational boundaries to solve novel problems.
How this employer is doing
solid
- News: Recently Raised Funding
- Recently Raised Funding
In the news
Amazon 3.7 GW Campus and Anthropic $13.7B Deal Lead U.S. Data Center Expansion, Ein Presswire
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Pay for this role
$280,000 to $320,000 per year
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