Sanctions & Export Controls Compliance Officer

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 Integrity & Compliance (I&C) function is building the systems that let us scale responsibly as our products reach more people, more enterprises, and more regulated industries. Our global compliance program is bespoke, reflecting our unique mission and position as one of the leading AI labs operating on the frontier.

Our Sanctions & Regulatory Programs pillar is a key pillar of our overall Integrity & Compliance function and covers a range of compliance domain areas including economic sanctions, US export controls, and regulatory compliance programs stemming from global AI safety regulation.

As a member of the Sanctions & Regulatory Programs team, you'll be a core driver of Anthropic's trade compliance program, covering both economic sanctions and US export controls, where the rules governing AI models and compute are still being written, and where sanctions and export control exposure runs through globally accessible APIs, downstream and embedded-partner channels, and rapid geographic expansion.

In this role you'll roll up your sleeves across the full sanctions and export controls compliance remit: partnering with internal counsel on the interpretation of applicable law, setting the policy frameworks and escalation standards that govern how Anthropic operates, and advising first-line teams (Operations, Product, Engineering, Go-to-Market, Finance, and Safeguards) on how to implement them. This is a builder's role at a company that takes integrity seriously and moves fast. You'll be at the forefront of novel trade compliance questions in artificial intelligence, exercise independent judgment on issues without clear precedent, and help build durable programs that let Anthropic move quickly while honoring its obligations to regulators, customers, and the public.

Key responsibilities

• Own the policy frameworks for Anthropic's sanctions and export controls programs, and keep them current as regulations and the business evolve

• Serve as the day-to-day subject-matter expert on international sanctions and US export controls (e.g., OFAC and other applicable sanctions regimes, EAR classification and advisory, BIS rules, deemed exports, and restricted-party / end-use and end-user controls), partnering with Trade Compliance Counsel on interpretation and with first-line teams on implementation

• Conduct sanctions and export controls risk assessments for new products, features, partner and reseller channels, and geographic expansion, and translate findings into clear control requirements

• Define screening standards, thresholds, and escalation criteria for restricted-party screening, and partner with Regulatory Operations on program design, edge-case handling, and exception review

• Advise on third-party, downstream, and embedded-partner access risk, including contractual trade controls provisions and diligence standards for resellers, marketplaces, and platform partners

• Review escalated matters from first-line teams, disposition complex screening and end-use cases, and determine when regulator engagement, licensing, or voluntary self-disclosure is warranted in partnership with Legal

• Monitor applicable regulatory developments and enforcement actions, assess impact on Anthropic, and drive any required program changes

• Conduct and coordinate testing and assurance over first-line trade compliance controls, and track findings and remediation to closure

• Develop trade compliance training and awareness content for relevant employee populations

• Prepare program reporting for I&C and Legal leadership on program health, key risks, and emerging issues

Minimum qualifications

• Substantive, hands-on experience with economic sanctions compliance (OFAC, EU, UK, and other applicable regimes), including program design, risk assessment, and screening governance, in a commercial environment

• Substantive, hands-on experience with US export controls (EAR/BIS), including classification, end-use/end-user analysis, and deemed-export assessment

• Experience building or materially maturing a sanctions or export controls compliance program: policies, risk frameworks, controls, testing, and training

• A track record of partnering with legal counsel to interpret trade controls requirements and translating them into practical guidance for product, engineering, operations, and commercial teams

• Experience reviewing and advising on trade controls provisions in commercial agreements and on third-party / downstream-customer diligence

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including drafting policy and preparing materials for senior leadership

Preferred qualifications

• 7+ years of relevant experience in sanctions and/or export controls compliance

• Prior experience in a Big 4 or other compliance consulting or advisory professional services firm

• Experience in a hyper-scaling tech company or other fast-paced environment

• Exposure to trade compliance in software, cloud, or AI contexts

• Sound judgment and the ability to make risk-based decisions and move work forward with imperfect information

• A leadership style characterized by integrity, humility, strategic thinking, and solution-orientation

Role-specific policy: For this role, we expect staff to be able to work from either our Washington, DC, San Francisco, or New York City office at least 3 days a week, though we encourage you to apply even if you might need some flexibility for an interim period of time.

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