About the Position

Policy Design Manager, Conventional Weapons

San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Washington, DC

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

Anthropic's Safeguards organization builds the policies, evaluations, and enforcement systems that define and hold the limits on how our models can be used. In this role, you'll own our conventional weapons work.

Defining a crisp boundary between acceptable and harmful requests in this domain is difficult, because the underlying components are dual-use: the same capabilities that serve civilian engineering and research can also contribute to a weapons system. Building the threat models, evaluations, and detection systems that hold that boundary is the core of this role.

Conventional weapons are increasingly defined by software, and the risks reach well beyond firearms: from a model operating a weapons system or writing guidance code, to the weaponization of dual-use platforms. The role spans every weapon class, up to autonomous systems that select and engage targets without human authorization.

You will help define the line between prohibited weapons development and legitimate research and engineering work, and how to operationalize the distinction. This will include translating technical judgment into principles that engineers can implement and enforcement teams can act on.

Key Responsibilities

Own and maintain Anthropic's conventional weapons policy, defining the boundary between the activities our models should and should not support
Build the threat models and evaluations that measure how our models could contribute to weapons development, including the software and autonomy components that define modern weapons systems, and keep them current as the technology and its misuse evolve
Partner with engineering to turn the policy into model guardrails, detection systems, and enforcement tooling
Serve as the subject-matter expert for escalations involving conventional weapons content, including rapid response to emerging risks
Build shared understanding of the policy across product, engineering, legal, and leadership, communicating its reasoning to technical and non-technical audiences
Engage external experts as well as government and industry partners, and translate that engagement into stronger policy and enforcement

Minimum Qualifications

Deep, applied expertise in weapons systems and the ability to translate complex technical evidence into sound policy judgments
Experience in a relevant setting, such as a service research laboratory, a defense research or innovation agency, or a company that designs or builds weapons systems
Ability to write clear, operationally precise policy and explain complex technical topics to non-specialist audiences
Understanding of the legal frameworks governing weapons and their transfer, and the ability to craft policy that holds up across jurisdictions
Ability to do rigorous technical analysis of weapons systems using only open sources
Comfort with ambiguity and a passion for solving problems that have no established playbook
Motivation to prevent misuse without obstructing the legitimate work in the field

Preferred Qualifications

Working understanding of machine learning and large language model fundamentals
Hands-on engineering experience in a weapons-relevant technical domain, such as systems engineering, robotics and autonomy, guidance/navigation/control, sensors and signal processing, aerospace or mechanical engineering, materials and energetics, or embedded software
Hands-on experience applying arms export controls (ITAR/EAR) or international arms-control regimes
Experience building or evaluating classifiers, including LLM-based ones, and reasoning about precision and recall for rare, high-consequence categories
Trust & safety or product policy experience at a technology platform

We Offer

Competitive compensation: $245,000-$285,000 USD per year
Hybrid work 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.
Comprehensive benefits: 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.

About the Company

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.

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.

Policy Design Manager, Conventional Weapons

Job description