Applied AI Engineer, Startups (Life Sciences)

On Anthropic’s Startups team (Life Sciences), you work directly with life sciences and biotech startups to bring Claude-based products to life and support scientific research workflows. This role blends hands-on applied AI engineering with real-world domain needs, helping teams move from prototypes to systems scientists can rely on.

Location: San Francisco, CA (hybrid, with an office presence of at least 25% of the time).
Compensation: $280,000 - $320,000 USD annually.

Responsibilities

• Act as a deep technical advisor to high-potential life sciences and biotech startups, whether Claude is embedded in the product they sell or used to support discovery and research workflows, to build innovative AI use cases.
• Work hands-on with startup engineering teams and their scientists through pair programming and architecture reviews, while learning scientific workflows end to end so guidance fits into real research pipelines.
• Develop prototypes and technical documentation, including evaluation suites, scientifically grounded benchmarks, AI engineering techniques, and architecture diagrams that help startups build, operate, and scale with Claude.
• Create reference implementations and sample code that can be adopted without starting from scratch, including example MCP servers for domain-specific data sources (genomics platforms, literature databases, experimental repositories) and agent skills for common scientific workflows.
• Collaborate with Applied AI Architects to maintain context and continuity across customer engagements.
• Identify patterns across engagements, including deployment challenges in life sciences such as heterogeneous data, auditability requirements, and the gap between a working prototype and a system that scientists trust, and share insights with Product, Engineering, Research, and the broader Applied AI team.
• Produce technical content for startup audiences, such as documentation, tutorials, and sample code.
• Represent Anthropic within the life sciences startup ecosystem through community programming, including hackathons, webinars, technical office hours, in-person founder events, and research show-and-tells.
• Travel to customer sites for workshops, implementation guidance, and relationship building.

Requirements

• Deep experience in life sciences or biotech from research or industry work in areas such as genomics, drug discovery, molecular design, lab automation, or clinical development, with strong opinions on bridging the gap between what AI can do today and what the life sciences need.
• 4+ years of technical experience as a software engineer, ML or research engineer, computational biologist, research scientist, or technical founder. Production experience building LLM-powered applications (prompting, context engineering, agent architectures, evaluation frameworks, and scaled deployment) or a track record applying AI to real scientific work in the lab or research.
• Experience with startups or high-growth companies, plus a strong affinity for working with founders and small teams that move quickly.
• Strong technical communication skills, including translating complex AI concepts into architectural decisions and actionable implementation plans for both engineering and scientific audiences, and leading technical workshops, hackathons, or developer-focused events.
• A collaborative approach, ability to context-switch across scientific domains and use cases, and a focus on making powerful technology safe and beneficial.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and benefits
• Optional equity donation matching
• Generous vacation and parental leave
• Flexible working hours
• Lovely office space designed for collaboration

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 via coursework, training, or professional experience
• Minimum experience: 4 years (internal level requirements may adjust based on years of experience)
• Hybrid policy: In-office at least 25% of the time; some roles may require more
• Visa sponsorship: Visa sponsorship is available. If offered, Anthropic will make every reasonable effort to support the process, and they retain an immigration lawyer to assist.