Anthropic Fellows Program Lead, Alignment Science

About the Anthropic Fellows Program

The Anthropic Fellows Program is designed to accelerate AI safety research and foster research talent. The program provides funding and mentorship for cohorts of Fellows to work full-time on AI safety research. The program runs for approximately two months, with opportunities to extend for an additional four months based on progress and performance. Fellows are matched with Anthropic mentors to investigate research questions in areas such as Adversarial Robustness & AI Control, Scalable Oversight, Model Organisms of Misalignment, and Mechanistic Interpretability. We currently run this program on a twice-annual basis, and we aim to expand out the program or run similar efforts over time.

The program aims to expand the pool of researchers working at the frontier of AI safety by supporting engineers and researchers with strong coding or technical backgrounds in their transition into safety research. In recent months, our collaborations through Anthropic Fellows and similar programs have led to a majority of our research papers and new hires to our Alignment Science team.

About the role

As Program Lead for the Anthropic Fellows Program, you will be responsible for designing, iterating on, and scaling the program's operations while ensuring Fellows have the infrastructure and support needed to produce high-impact research. This role combines program management and operational excellence to build one of the premier pipelines for AI safety research and talent development.

You'll work closely with senior researchers and operations teams across Anthropic to identify high-impact research projects, coordinate resources, and ensure smooth program execution. This role requires both strategic vision to shape the program's future and tactical excellence to manage day-to-day operations.

Please note: We expect this role to be in-person 5 days a week in San Francisco or Berkeley, CA

Responsibilities:

Program Operations & Management

• Own end-to-end program execution including timelines, milestones, and deliverables
• Manage expense and compute tracking/approvals (~$15,000 per month per Fellow for compute and research spending)
• Set up and coordinate fellows programming, including Q&As, talks, socials, and research discussions
• Design and iterate on program structure, including performance evaluation criteria for extensions
• Track and report on program metrics and Fellow progress

Recruiting & Talent Pipeline

• Lead Fellows recruiting efforts including coordinating contractors and liaising with cross-functional stakeholders
• Develop and execute outreach strategies to attract top technical talent
• Coordinate application review and selection processes
• Work with the recruiting team to support placement of successful Fellows into full-time roles at Anthropic and other safety research organizations

Research Coordination

• Collect and curate research project proposals from Anthropic researchers
• Solicit feedback on proposals and coordinate selection of the best projects
• Match Fellows with appropriate projects and mentors based on skills and interests
• Facilitate collaboration between Fellows and with Anthropic mentors across research areas

People Support

• Directly manage a subset of Fellows when needed
• Coordinate with mentors to ensure Fellows receive appropriate technical and career guidance
• Support Fellows through research challenges and help navigate open-ended projects
• Coach Fellows through interpersonal or collaboration-related issues

Strategic Initiatives

• Lead efforts to scale the program by documenting program impact and securing buy-in for additional growth
• Support broader safety-related TPM initiatives including:
• Spearheading safety-related collaborations with other organizations, e.g., for auditing the alignment of models
• Spotting opportunities for internal projects which could be supported with external help, e.g. sourcing and setting up contractors for alignment eval building or generation
• Recruiting for contracting roles (e.g., paper writing support)
• Partner with external programs and organizations in the AI safety ecosystem for research and talent sourcing and development

What We're Looking For:

Required Qualifications

• Strong project management skills including timeline management, resource allocation, and cross-functional coordination
• Demonstrated ability to coordinate logistics for events, programs, or initiatives
• Experience in understanding AI safety research at a high level, or ability to learn to do so
• Experience in managing complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives, or ability to do so
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Program management experience, preferably in research or engineering environments
• Experience with recruiting, evaluating, and placing technical talent
• Familiarity with the AI and/or AI safety research landscape and key research agendas
• Prior experience contributing to or managing projects, especially engineering or research projects
• Background in machine learning, computer science, or related technical fields
• Familiarity with machine learning infrastructure and computational research workflows

Personal Qualities

• High agency at identifying new opportunities for impact
• Strong ability to execute quickly and get stuff done
• High reliability at execution – ability to consistently understand what needs to happen and execute without errors
• Ability to handle and track a large volume of diverse tasks
• Excitement for developing research talent and advancing AI safety and Anthropic’s mission
• Strong work ethic – ability to do what needs to happen to meet tight deadlines or make ambitious goals happen
• Great interpersonal skills – ability to be the public face of the program, build relationships across diverse stakeholders, and navigate and advise on interpersonal difficulties between researchers