Research Scientist (AI)

TL;DR

Research Scientist (AI): Measuring and understanding recursive self-improvement and AI R&D acceleration with an accent on quantitative modeling of capability growth. Focus on designing evaluations for model-development bottlenecks, testing hypotheses on automation, and producing graded assessments of AI capabilities.

Location: Hybrid (San Francisco, CA or New York City, NY). Must be in one of the offices at least 25% of the time.

Salary: $350,000 - $850,000 USD

Company

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

What you will do

• Identify signals tracking AI R&D acceleration and design corresponding evaluations.
• Develop quantitative models of capability growth and self-improvement dynamics using telemetry data.
• Conduct experiments and evaluations to test hypotheses regarding automation and AI capabilities.
• Create graded assessments and system-card sections for internal decision-makers and public reporting.
• Collaborate across pretraining, RL, economic research, and policy teams.

Requirements

• Hands-on research experience with large language models (pretraining, fine-tuning, RL, evals, or agent systems).
• Strong quantitative instincts and proficiency in quantitative modeling and reasoning.
• Experience in forecasting or publishing AI forecasting scenarios.
• Ability to design and defend rigorous evaluation methodologies from vague starting points.
• Strong written communication skills with the ability to calibrate confidence levels.
• Must be based in or be able to work from San Francisco, CA or New York City, NY.

Nice to have

• Direct experience training or applying RL to frontier models.
• Expertise in scaling laws, capability forecasting, or emergent-capability studies.
• Quantitative background in physics or applied mathematics.
• Experience writing cited system cards or capability reports.
• Experience supervising and correcting AI-generated code.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative "big science" environment focusing on high-impact research.
• Competitive compensation and optional equity donation matching.
• Generous vacation and parental leave policies.
• Flexible working hours.
• Access to collaborative office spaces in SF and NYC.
• Visa sponsorship availability.