Applied AI Engineer, Startups (Physical AI)

Location: San Francisco, CA; hybrid attendance in an Anthropic office at least 25% of the time is expected

Annual salary: $280,000–$320,000 USD

Company

Anthropic builds reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems designed to be safe and beneficial.

What you will do

• Advise AI-native startups in robotics, semiconductors, aerospace, manufacturing, and civil infrastructure on building products and engineering workflows with Claude.
• Partner with software and hardware teams through pair programming, architecture reviews, workshops, and implementation guidance.
• Develop prototypes, technical documentation, evaluation suites, benchmarks, architecture diagrams, reference implementations, and sample code.
• Integrate Claude with CAD, simulation, design tools, and industrial automation systems.
• Identify recurring challenges in physical AI, including drawings, 3D geometry, board layout, routing, GD&T, latency, on-premise constraints, and physical safety.
• Collaborate with Applied AI Architects and Anthropic’s Product, Engineering, and Research teams, while contributing to technical content and startup events.

Requirements

• Deep engineering experience in a physical discipline such as mechanical, electrical, aerospace, robotics, semiconductor, manufacturing, or civil engineering.
• 4+ years of technical experience as a software, ML, research, robotics, controls, hardware, or systems engineer, or as a technical founder.
• Production experience building LLM-powered applications with prompting, context engineering, agent architectures, evaluation frameworks, and deployment at scale, or experience applying AI to engineering work.
• Experience with startups or high-growth companies and the ability to work effectively with founders and small teams.
• Strong technical communication skills for translating AI concepts into architectural decisions and implementation plans for software and hardware audiences.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent education, training, or professional experience in a relevant field.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative work across research, engineering, product, policy, and business teams.
• Flexible working hours and an office environment designed for collaboration.
• Generous vacation and parental leave.
• Competitive compensation and optional equity donation matching.
• Visa sponsorship is available, with reasonable efforts and immigration-lawyer support for successful candidates.
• Travel to customer sites for workshops, implementation guidance, and relationship building.

Hiring process

• Applications are evaluated based on relevant technical experience and demonstrated qualifications.
• Candidates should follow Anthropic’s policy for AI usage during the application process.