Research Engineer (Chip Design RL)

Location: Must be based in or able to work from San Francisco, CA or New York City, NY (Hybrid: at least 25% in-office)

Salary: $500,000 - $850,000 USD

Company

Anthropic is an AI safety and research company dedicated to building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

What you will do

• Invent and implement RL environments for agentic RTL generation and design verification.
• Optimize EDA-tool latency and develop proxy rewards for hardware design tasks.
• Conduct experiments to shape the roadmap for chip design RL.
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers to integrate research into production training.
• Apply chip design expertise to create effective learning signals for AI models.

Requirements

• Expertise in ASIC or FPGA design (RTL, verification, physical design, PPA optimization).
• Fluency with industry EDA tools and design processes.
• Experience with chip tape-outs and the full lifecycle from spec to silicon.
• Ability to balance research exploration with engineering implementation.
• Must be able to work from San Francisco or New York City offices (Hybrid policy).

Nice to have

• Experience with reinforcement learning, evaluations, or environments.
• Background in building automation for chip design flows.
• Experience with ML accelerators or high-performance compute hardware.
• Familiarity with high-level synthesis or architecture simulators.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive compensation and benefits package.
• Generous vacation and parental leave policies.
• Flexible working hours.
• Collaborative research environment with frequent discussions.
• Visa sponsorship available for qualified candidates.