Corporate Development Lead, Life Sciences

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 425,000 - 600,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Equity donation matching (optional)

Generous vacation and parental leave

Flexible working hours

Office space in San Francisco

Job summary

Anthropic, headquartered in San Francisco, seeks an experienced Corporate Development leader to drive strategic life sciences transactions, including acquisitions, investments, and partnerships. You will source opportunities, run diligence, and structure complex deals that align with Anthropic's AI safety mission.

You will build a pipeline across AI-native companies in drug discovery, clinical development, and healthcare data infrastructure, collaborating with research, product, and policy teams

Qualifications

• Led complex transactions from sourcing through close.
• Understanding of drug development lifecycle stages.
• Strong analytical and financial modeling skills.
• Ability to engage scientists, engineers, executives, and regulators.
• Comfortable in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.
• Commitment to AI safety and Anthropic's mission.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute corporate development strategy in life sciences.
• Build a pipeline across AI-native life sciences companies.
• Lead end-to-end transaction processes from sourcing to closing.
• Assess technical, scientific, and commercial value of opportunities.
• Structure and negotiate complex deals with legal/finance teams.
• Build financial models and valuation analyses for life sciences.
• Drive post-transaction integration and talent retention.
• Build relationships with founders and life sciences investors.
• Present strategic recommendations to leadership.

Skills

M&A transactions

Drug development lifecycle

AI/Software fluency

Analytical/financial modeling

Communication with scientists/regitors

Adaptability in fast-paced env

Clear writing/speaking

AI safety focus

Education

PhD/MD/PharmD or MBA

Job description

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About The Role

Anthropic is seeking an experienced Corporate Development leader to drive our strategic transactions in life sciences and biotech. Frontier AI is beginning to change how drugs are discovered, developed, and brought to patients, and Anthropic wants to help build that future responsibly. In this role, you will source and execute acquisitions, investments, and strategic partnerships with AI-native life sciences companies, partnering directly with Anthropic's leadership, research, and product teams to shape our strategy in the sector, grounded in Anthropic's strategic priorities. The ideal candidate combines deep life sciences domain knowledge with technical fluency in AI and a record of closing complex transactions. You understand how R&D, clinical, and regulatory workflows actually run, you can tell a durable AI-native business from a thin wrapper, and you can assess a target's science, data, and compliance posture as rigorously as its financials. You care about AI safety and Anthropic's mission to build AI systems that are helpful, harmless, and honest, and you recognize the stakes of applying AI where patient safety and scientific integrity are on the line. Join us in shaping how AI accelerates science and medicine while keeping it safe and beneficial for humanity. This role sits at the intersection of frontier AI research and life sciences, with direct impact on Anthropic's growth in one of its most consequential sectors.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and execute Anthropic's corporate development strategy in life sciences, covering acquihires, tuck-in acquisitions, minority investments, and strategic partnerships


• Build and maintain a target pipeline across AI-native companies in drug discovery, clinical development, regulatory and medical writing, lab automation, and healthcare data infrastructure


• Lead end-to-end transaction processes, from sourcing through diligence, negotiation, signing, and integration


• Partner with research, product, engineering, and go-to-market teams to assess the technical, scientific, and commercial value of opportunities


• Run sector-specific diligence, including scientific and data validation, regulatory posture (FDA, EMA, GxP, 21 CFR Part 11), data privacy (HIPAA, GDPR), quality systems, and IP


• Assess build/partner/buy tradeoffs and competitive dynamics against incumbents, AI-native entrants, and other frontier AI labs


• Structure and negotiate complex deals, including earnouts, milestone-based consideration, and licensing arrangements, working closely with legal, finance, and policy teams


• Build financial models and valuation analyses suited to life sciences businesses, including services-heavy and usage-based revenue models


• Drive post-transaction integration, with particular attention to retaining scientific and technical talent and maintaining regulated customer commitments


• Build relationships with founders, life sciences and healthcare VCs, pharma and biotech corporate development teams, and academic research institutions


• Present strategic recommendations to executive leadership and the board


• Support Anthropic's partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, CROs, and research organizations

Minimum Qualifications

• Have led complex M&A, investment, or partnership transactions from sourcing through close


• Understand the drug development lifecycle, from discovery through clinical trials, regulatory submission, and commercialization


• Have strong technical fluency in AI and software, gained as an engineer, product manager, scientist, or technology investor


• Bring strong analytical and financial modeling skills


• Can engage credibly with scientists, engineers, executives, and regulators


• Are comfortable in fast-paced, ambiguous environments with competing priorities


• Write and speak clearly, and can influence at all levels


• Have a deep interest in AI safety and Anthropic's mission

Preferred Qualifications

• Have 8-12 years of experience across corporate development, investment banking, or investing, with at least 5 years focused on life sciences, biotech, or healthcare technology


• Hold an advanced degree in the life sciences (PhD, MD, PharmD) or an MBA


• Have worked at a pharmaceutical company, biotech, CRO, or life sciences software company


• Have experience with AI/ML applied to biology, chemistry, or clinical operations


• Bring an established network among life sciences founders, healthcare VCs, and pharma business development leaders


• Have diligenced or integrated businesses operating under GxP, HIPAA, or similar regulatory regimes


• Have led post-merger integration or built a new business unit


• Have experience with cross-border transactions, particularly in the US, EU, and UK life sciences markets

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.

Annual Salary

$425,000—$600,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

How We're Different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues.

Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage:

Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.