Head of Strategic Startups (AI)

Location: San Francisco, CA, United States; hybrid with staff expected to work from an Anthropic office at least 25% of the time

Annual compensation: $550,000–$750,000 USD OTE, including base salary and target sales commissions or bonuses.

Company

Anthropic builds reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems intended to be safe and beneficial for users and society.

What you will do

• Set the multi-year strategy, segmentation, coverage model, partnership structures, and investment priorities for the Strategic Startups business.
• Build, lead, and scale a high-performing Account Executive organization through hiring, coaching, development, and operating cadence.
• Own the segment's revenue plan and P&L-level outcomes, including forecasting, capacity planning, quota design, and resource allocation.
• Lead relationships with high-leverage AI-native startups and negotiate complex commercial, technical, and partnership agreements.
• Develop credits programs, strategic pricing, co-development, and joint go-to-market structures with emerging companies.
• Represent the startup segment internally and externally, influencing product, engineering, pricing, finance, partnerships, and go-to-market decisions.

Requirements

• 15+ years of experience in enterprise or technical software sales, including 7+ years leading sales teams.
• Experience owning a significant revenue line with accountability for planning, forecasting, and results.
• Experience building or materially scaling sales or account management organizations, including coverage models, compensation plans, and operating rhythms.
• Deep familiarity with startups, founders, venture investors, and accelerators, plus experience with technical, consumption-based, or platform products such as APIs, infrastructure, developer tools, ML, or AI.
• Experience structuring and closing complex commercial or partnership agreements and influencing product, pricing, and go-to-market decisions cross-functionally.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent education, training, or professional experience.

Nice to have

• Experience leading a startup or emerging-companies segment at a cloud, infrastructure, or AI platform company during hypergrowth.
• Founder, operator, or venture experience.
• Experience building startup credits, accelerator, or investor ecosystem programs.
• Experience hiring and developing leaders who later ran their own organizations.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative environment focused on safe, trustworthy, steerable AI.
• Flexible working hours and a hybrid office model.
• Competitive compensation, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation, and parental leave.
• Office environment designed for collaboration.

Hiring process

• Candidate AI usage is subject to Anthropic's application policy.
• Visa sponsorship is available for eligible roles and candidates, with immigration lawyer support.