Research Engineer (Science of Scaling) in London

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 a Research Engineer/Scientist to join the Science of Scaling team, responsible for developing the next generation of large language models. In this role, you will work at the intersection of cutting‑edge research and practical engineering, contributing to the development of safe, steerable, and trustworthy AI systems. You’ll contribute across the entire stack, from low‑level optimizations to high‑level algorithm and experimental design, balancing research goals with practical engineering constraints.

Responsibilities

• Conduct research into the science of converting compute into intelligence
• Independently lead small research projects while collaborating with team members on larger initiatives
• Design, run, and analyze scientific experiments to advance our understanding of large language models
• Optimize training infrastructure to improve efficiency and reliability
• Develop dev tooling to enhance team productivity

Qualifications

• Have significant software engineering experience and a proven track record of building complex systems
• Hold an advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field
• Are proficient in Python and experienced with deep learning frameworks
• Are results‑oriented with a bias towards flexibility and impact
• Enjoy pair programming and collaborative work, and are willing to take on tasks outside your job description to support the team
• View research and engineering as two sides of the same coin, seeking to understand all aspects of the research program to maximize impact
• Care about the societal impacts of your work and have ambitious goals for AI safety and general progress

Strong candidates may have

• Experience with JAX
• Experience with reinforcement learning
• Experience working on high‑performance, large‑scale ML systems
• Familiarity with accelerators, Kubernetes, and OS internals
• Experience with language modeling using transformer architectures
• Background in large‑scale ETL processes
• Experience with distributed training at scale (thousands of accelerators)

Strong candidates need not have

• Experience in all of the above areas — we value breadth of interest and willingness to learn over checking every box
• Prior work specifically on language models or transformers; strong engineering fundamentals and ML knowledge transfer well
• An advanced degree — exceptional engineers with strong research instincts are equally encouraged to apply

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

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’re not able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. 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.

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