Tabletop Exercise Lead (AI)

Location: San Francisco, CA; hybrid policy requiring staff to be in an Anthropic office at least 25% of the time

Annual salary: $295,000 USD

Company

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation developing reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems for the benefit of users and society.

What you will do

• Set the research agenda for tabletop exercises, including questions, scenarios, audiences, and objectives.
• Design exercises as empirical studies with standardized scenarios, data capture, repeated play, and comparable results.
• Build measurement systems using assessments, decision logs, transcript analysis, and after-action reports.
• Publish findings and brief senior stakeholders inside and outside Anthropic on identified gaps.
• Hire, manage, and develop a team and a bench of facilitators.
• Build a reusable scenario library, facilitator kit, and Claude-driven simulations that generate live outside-world feeds during exercises.

Requirements

• Experience designing and running tabletop exercises, wargames, or simulations for senior decision-makers, with published work on the subject.
• Training in simulation, experimental methods, or structured analysis.
• 10+ years of experience in national security, government, technology policy, or strategy.
• Strong understanding of AI capabilities and safety research sufficient to keep scenarios technically grounded.
• Experience managing teams, including hiring, setting direction, feedback, and professional development.
• Extensive use of Claude and other AI tools, with a demonstrated commitment to AI safety and Anthropic’s public benefit mission.

Nice to have

• Published research on wargaming methods, simulation, or crisis decision-making.
• Experience running exercises that informed policy or crisis-response decisions.
• Experience with multi-iteration or experimental wargames and cross-run analysis.
• Experience using AI agents or language models as players, adjudicators, or analysts.
• Relationships across national security, government, policy, and AI communities, plus widely read work on AI, emerging technology, strategy, or crisis decision-making.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative research environment focused on large-scale, high-impact AI work.
• Flexible working hours and an office environment for collaboration.
• Generous vacation and parental leave.
• Competitive compensation and optional equity donation matching.
• Visa sponsorship is available, with immigration lawyer support, subject to role and candidate eligibility.