Research Scientist, Life Sciences (Chemistry)

Location: San Francisco, California; fully on-site in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Annual salary: $300,000–$320,000 USD.

Company

Anthropic develops reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems and conducts large-scale AI research as a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco.

What you will do

• Design multi-step synthetic routes for small molecules, including route selection, reaction optimization, purification strategy, and interpretation of NMR, LC-MS, HPLC, and other characterization data.
• Coordinate synthesis and biological evaluation with contract research organizations and academic partners.
• Evaluate AI-designed molecules and AI-proposed synthetic routes, drive them to experimental readout, and feed results back to research teams.
• Apply medicinal chemistry principles, including SAR analysis and physicochemical property optimization, to compound design and prioritization.
• Maintain high-quality, well-documented experimental data, including procedures, spectra, and failure modes.
• Communicate findings to chemistry, AI research, and life sciences audiences.

Requirements

• PhD in chemistry.
• Demonstrated medicinal chemistry experience, including SAR-driven design and optimization of small molecules, with recent, sustained hands-on synthetic work.
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and defining problems in a rapidly evolving research environment.
• Ability to work independently and collaborate effectively across cross-functional teams, with strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Minimum education: bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
• Relevant field of study demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience.
• Years of experience required will correlate with internal job-level requirements.

Nice to have

• 5+ years of medicinal chemistry experience beyond the PhD.
• Track record of advancing programs from hit identification through lead optimization.
• Experience directing synthetic chemistry activities at contract research organizations.
• Computational chemistry, cheminformatics, or coding skills, such as Python with RDKit or pandas for data analysis and automation.
• Experience using AI or ML tools in the life sciences.
• Publications and/or patents demonstrating scientific impact.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative research environment focused on a few large-scale efforts and frequent research discussions.
• Flexible working hours and an office-based collaboration environment.
• Competitive compensation, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation, and parental leave.
• Visa sponsorship may be available, with immigration lawyer support; sponsorship cannot be guaranteed for every role or candidate.
• Staff are generally expected to be in an office at least 25% of the time, while this role requires full-time on-site work.