Research Associate, Biology

About the Position

We are looking for a Research Associate to join Anthropic's Life Sciences team in San Francisco, CA. This is an entry-level role ideal for early-career bench scientists who have completed an undergraduate or master's program in molecular biology, biochemistry, or a related field.

About the Role

You'll work directly alongside senior scientists, executing and troubleshooting experiments at the bench while learning advanced techniques in a fast-moving, highly collaborative environment. This is a fully hands-on bench role - while familiarity with computational biology and bioinformatics is welcome, the role does not involve AI/ML model development.

Responsibilities

• Execute molecular biology and biochemistry experiments at the bench under the direction of senior scientists
• Maintain meticulous, reproducible records and contribute to shared protocols
• Troubleshoot experiments, propose adjustments, and present results clearly in group meetings
• Maintain mammalian and bacterial cell lines, materials stocks, and reagent inventories
• Learn and adopt new techniques rapidly as projects evolve, with training provided

Requirements

• Core Skills:
  • Proficient with foundational molecular biology techniques: PCR, gel electrophoresis, molecular cloning, and plasmid preparation
  • Experienced with aseptic technique and bacterial or mammalian cell culture, and with nucleic acid extraction, purification, and quantification
  • Follow, document, and adapt experimental protocols with care and precision
• Preferred Skills:
  • Protein expression and purification experience (e.g., affinity, SEC, IEX)
  • Mammalian cell culture experience, including transfection and stable line maintenance
  • Enzyme kinetics or quantitative biochemical assay development (fluorescence, absorbance, FRET)
  • Next-generation sequencing library preparation experience
  • Familiarity with common bioinformatics workflows and molecular biology software (e.g., sequence analysis, alignment, primer and construct design)
  • Experience using AI tools such as Claude in a research setting - for literature review, protocol drafting, data interpretation, or experimental troubleshooting

We Offer

• Competitive annual salary: $95,000 - $120,000 USD
• Hybrid work location policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time
• 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.

About the Company

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.

Anthropic's Life Sciences team is building a world-class research group focused on making fundamental biological discoveries. The team combines cutting-edge AI with hands-on biological research, positioning Anthropic at the forefront of demonstrating how AI tools can accelerate scientific workflows and enable discovery.

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.

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.

Apply for this Job

Interested in building your career at Anthropic? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.