Commercial Activation Lead

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 funds delivery partners to help customers adopt Claude, through assessments, workshops, proofs of concept, and full delivery engagements. Our partner request process is the front door for all of it: an account executive (AE) requests partner support, and the request is checked against program rules and matched to a partner.

Commercial is the program's highest-volume segment, and the one where a quick introduction and the right match matter most. Automation now drafts the first match and the introduction, and a vendor delivery team handles day-to-day follow-up and tracker updates. What's left is the work that needs a person sellers trust.

You'll be the one Activations contact for US Commercial sellers once a request is in, from submission to a partner on a signed statement of work (SOW). Partner Sales Managers (PSMs) attach the partner and own the opportunity, and at their volume they move on to the next deal. You'll own the follow-through: matching and re-matching, getting AE and customer introductions to happen, handling exception requests, and working the special cases that don't fit the standard path. Decision rights are clear: the program lead sets program rules, targets, and exception policy; you apply them on Commercial requests, decide what the rules already cover, and bring the rest with a recommendation.

We're looking for a partner seller or channel operator whom sellers and partners trust, who is comfortable owning a high-volume book, and who keeps following up until each request is closed. Success in this role comes down to three things: how quickly Commercial requests move from AE introduction to customer introduction and on to a signed SOW, whether sellers know exactly who to go to and get a straight answer, and whether exceptions are handled the same way every time.

Key responsibilities

• Serve as the single point of contact for the AE, the PSM, and the partner on every US Commercial request, from submission to confirmed SOW, so sellers deal with one person instead of several

• Answer "Where is my request?" with the current status, the blocker, and the next step with a date, and keep each request's record accurate enough that the answer is already written down

• Join the PSM pipeline and activation calls every week so requests don't slip between PSMs, and leave each call with an owner and a date on every open Commercial request discussed

• Own the request and its follow-through within clear boundaries: the PSM owns the opportunity, partner attach, and getting the SOW signed; the partner manager owns the partner relationship; and you hand over cleanly to Partner Success once the SOW is confirmed

• Confirm the first match that automation drafts from the partner bench, change it when it's wrong for the customer, and own the matching decision on Commercial requests; check that a partner has capacity before introductions go out, and spread work so no partner holds more open introductions than it can take

• Re-match quickly when a partner declines, stalls, or is turned down by the AE, record the reason, and make sure the request has an owner in between

• Review where Commercial matches are declined or lost, and turn repeat causes into changes to the matching rules

• Follow up on automatically drafted introductions that an AE hasn't approved, and resolve what the escalation rules send to you; step in when a partner's booking of the customer introduction stalls, and work with the AE or their manager to unblock it

• Run the regular review of aged Commercial requests, making sure each one has a recorded decision (introduction made, customer not ready, re-match, or close out) and a follow-up date

• Track every Commercial request from partner named to confirmed SOW, publish the baseline for that stage, and remove the blockers that sit with Anthropic

• Be the first stop for Commercial exception requests, including special order-form terms: resolve what the rules already cover, bring the rest to the program lead with the history, the blocker, and a recommended action, and log every exception consistently so approvals follow the agreed routing and can be audited later

• Work through cases the standard path doesn't fit, such as small and medium business (SMB), insurance, and other segment-specific use cases, and write down how each type is handled so the next one is faster

• Run tests of new funding programs, which start in Commercial, with sellers and partners, and report back what worked, what confused people, and what should change before a wider launch

• Teach Commercial AEs and their managers how to request a partner, how one-click introductions work, and what the response rules are, so requests arrive complete the first time; make sure PSMs and partner managers know the stage targets, who to contact once a request is in, and how escalations work

• Work with the activation systems and operations lead to turn repeat exceptions and repeat questions into rule changes or automation, so fewer requests need a person each quarter

• Use Claude to prepare for pipeline calls, draft follow-ups, and summarize the state of your book, and propose the next manual step worth automating

• Work US hours with a regular overlap window with the London-based program lead, and hand off cleanly so Commercial sellers have coverage across time zones

Minimum qualifications

• Experience in partner sales, channel, or partner operations in B2B technology

• Experience working with services partners or systems integrators: matching them to customer work, judging fit and capacity, and holding them to commitments

• Experience working alongside AEs and sales managers on live deals, and able to get a response from a busy AE while keeping the relationship strong

• Sound judgment on exceptions: knows the difference between a case the rules already cover and one that needs a decision, and makes a clear recommendation on the second kind

• Persistent, courteous follow-through with internal and external stakeholders, and doesn't let items slip past their deadline

• Clear, concise writing: short messages people act on, and escalations that give the facts, the ask, and a recommendation

• Comfortable with ambiguity and rules that change often: asks good questions, writes the answer down, and applies it consistently

• Works comfortably with records and reports in Salesforce

• Uses Claude or similar AI tools in day-to-day work

Preferred qualifications

• Experience as a Partner Sales Manager or in a closely related role

• Experience using Claude specifically in day-to-day work

• Experience with partner funding, market development funds (MDF), or co-sell programs

• Experience with order forms and SOW workflows

• Experience selling into SMB or insurance

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.

For roles performing work in California: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records or criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act.

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.