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Corporate Development Lead

San Francisco, CA

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 is seeking an exceptional Corporate Development Lead to drive key strategic initiatives, including sourcing and executing acquisitions and strategic partnerships. In this highly visible role, you will partner directly with key members of Anthropic's leadership team to shape our growth strategy and help build the ecosystem around safe, beneficial AI, grounded in Anthropic’s strategic priorities. As a critical strategic partner, you'll identify opportunities for expansion, lead complex transactions, and ensure successful integration of new capabilities into our organization. This is a foundational role where you'll help build Anthropic's corporate development function from the ground up. You'll establish the frameworks, processes, and playbooks that will guide our M&A strategy for years to come. 

The ideal candidate brings a unique combination of strategic thinking, technical understanding, and execution capability. You're passionate about AI safety and Anthropic's mission to create AI systems that are helpful, harmless, and honest. You thrive in ambiguous environments and can navigate complex negotiations while maintaining strong relationships across multiple stakeholders.

Responsibilities:

  • Build a scalable corporate development function, establishing best practices across the full spectrum of transactions from acquihires to transformational acquisitions
  • Partner closely with cross-functional product, engineering, and research teams to understand and assess the technical and strategic value of potential opportunities
  • Lead end-to-end transaction processes, from initial sourcing through due diligence, negotiation, and integration
  • Create streamlined processes for rapid evaluation and execution of technical talent acquisitions
  • Build and maintain relationships with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and strategic partners in the AI ecosystem
  • Conduct comprehensive market analysis to identify emerging trends, competitive dynamics, and growth opportunities in AI and related technologies
  • Structure and negotiate complex deals, working closely with legal, finance, and other cross-functional teams
  • Drive post-transaction integration efforts, ensuring successful realization of strategic objectives
  • Develop financial models and valuation analyses to support investment decisions
  • Present strategic recommendations to executive leadership and board members
  • Support the growth of Anthropic's partnership ecosystem, including relationships with cloud providers and enterprise customers

You may be a good fit if you:

  • Have 12+ years of corporate development experience, with demonstrated success building or significantly scaling corp dev functions at high-growth technology companies
  • Possess strong technical understanding through either work experience (as a software engineer, product manager, or investor) or educational background (Computer Science degree or equivalent)
  • Demonstrate exceptional analytical and financial modeling skills
  • Have experience leading complex M&A transactions or strategic partnerships in technology sectors
  • Excel at building relationships and can effectively engage with technical and business stakeholders
  • Are comfortable operating in fast-paced, ambiguous environments with competing priorities
  • Possess outstanding communication skills, both written and verbal, with ability to influence at all levels
  • Have a deep interest in AI safety and alignment with Anthropic's mission

Strong candidates may also:

  • Have direct experience in AI/ML companies or deep learning research environments
  • Bring an established network within the AI startup ecosystem and venture capital community
  • Have led post-merger integration efforts or built new business units from the ground up
  • Possess an MBA or advanced technical degree
  • Have experience negotiating complex strategic partnerships with major technology companies
  • Demonstrate a track record of identifying and executing transformational opportunities
  • Show experience with international expansion or cross-border transactions

Join us in shaping the future of AI while ensuring it remains safe and beneficial for humanity. This role offers the unique opportunity to work at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research and strategic business development, with direct impact on Anthropic's growth trajectory.

The expected salary range for this position is:

Annual Salary:

$310,000 - $400,000 USD

Logistics

Education requirements: We require at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

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.

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.

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