Applied AI Engineer for Physical-World Startups

anthropic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 280,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Equity donation matching

Generous vacation and parental leave

Flexible working hours

Office space

Job summary

Anthropic is seeking an Applied AI Engineer for the Startups team to advise and collaborate with hardware and software startups leveraging Claude for physical-world applications. You will lead deep technical engagements, design scalable architectures, and develop evaluative prototypes while bridging Claude capabilities with real hardware needs.

Ideal candidates bring 4+ years in software/ML/robotics or related engineering roles, experience with startups, and a talent for translating AI concepts

Qualifications

• Deep engineering experience in a physical discipline such as mechanical, electrical, aerospace, robotics, semiconductor, manufacturing, or civil engineering, gained by designing, building, or operating real hardware.
• 4+ years of technical experience as a software engineer, ML or research engineer, robotics or controls engineer, hardware or systems engineer, or technical founder, with either production experience building LLM-powered applications, including prompting, context engineering, agent architectures, evaluation frameworks, and deployment at scale, or a track record of successfully applying AI to real engineering work in design, simulation, test, or production
• Experience with startups or high-growth companies and a love of working with founders and small teams that move quickly
• Strong technical communication skills, with the ability to translate complex AI concepts into architectural decisions and actionable implementation plans for both software and hardware engineering audiences and to run technical workshops, hackathons, or developer-focused events
• A collaborative approach to working across teams, the range of a generalist who can context-switch from robots to chips to rockets to factories and get up to speed on a new domain quickly, and a passion for making powerful technology safe and beneficial
• The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.
• For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a deep technical advisor to high-potential startups building in the physical world, whether Claude sits inside the product they sell or inside the way they design, test, and run their own hardware, working alongside them to push the boundaries of AI in engineering, manufacturing, operations, and more
• Work hands-on with startup software and hardware teams through pair programming and architecture reviews that accelerate their development, and understand their engineering workflows end to end, from design and simulation through test, production, and operations, so that your guidance fits how real hardware gets built
• Develop prototypes and technical documentation, including evaluation suites, benchmarks grounded in real engineering tasks, AI engineering techniques, and architecture diagrams, that enable startups to build, operate, and scale with Claude
• Create reference implementations and sample code that many companies can adopt without starting from scratch, for example integrating Claude with CAD, simulation, design tools, or industrial automation
• Collaborate closely with Applied AI Architects to maintain context and continuity across customer engagements
• Identify patterns across engagements, including what is hard about applying AI to physical systems such as reading drawings, 3D geometry, board layout and routing, GD&T, latency and on-premise constraints, and physical safety, then build repeatable evaluations and solutions and contribute insights back to Product, Engineering, Research, and the broader Applied AI team
• Create technical content for startup audiences including documentation, tutorials, and sample code
• Foster community engagement through hackathons, webinars, technical office hours, and startup-focused events
• Travel to customer sites for workshops, implementation guidance, and relationship building

Skills

Deep engineering experience

Software/ML/Robotics exper.

Technical communication

Cross-domain collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Job description

Anthropic is seeking an Applied AI Engineer for the Startups team to advise and collaborate with hardware and software startups leveraging Claude for physical-world applications. You will lead deep technical engagements, design scalable architectures, and develop evaluative prototypes while bridging Claude capabilities with real hardware needs.

Ideal candidates bring 4+ years in software/ML/robotics or related engineering roles, experience with startups, and a talent for translating AI concepts