IP Counsel, Transactions

anthropic; San Francisco, New York (CA, NY); On-site; USD 335,000 - 385,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Generous vacation & parental leave

Equity donation matching

Flexible working hours

Job summary

Anthropic seeks an experienced transactional attorney to lead the IP workstream within its growing legal department. You will conduct IP diligence, negotiate IP terms for acquisitions and investments, and shape playbooks and processes to scale IP-related transactions.

You will partner with Head of IP, M&A, Commercial Legal, and Corporate Development on complex matters. The role requires a JD and active US state bar admission, with 10+ years in transactional IP, and first-chair experience

Qualifications

• JD required and active in at least one US state bar.
• Extensive experience leading IP due diligence and negotiating IP terms in technology M&A.
• Experience negotiating IP provisions in complex commercial technology agreements (licenses, JDAs, services).
• Strong ability to communicate IP risks to business leaders and non-lawyers; decisive judgement on position.
• Deep knowledge of open source licensing, employee/contractor IP assignment, and trade secrets.

Responsibilities

• Lead IP workstream on acquisitions and strategic investments from diligence to closing and integration.
• Advise on IP terms in complex commercial, enterprise, partnership, and research agreements; negotiate terms.
• Serve as primary IP terms contact for commercial legal colleagues and train others.
• Develop playbooks, templates, and processes for IP terms across high-volume deals.
• Contribute to broader IP strategy, especially where it intersects with open source, trade secrets, patents, or new business models.

Skills

IP diligence

IP negotiation

communication to leadership

open source licensing

Education

Juris Doctor (JD)

US state bar admission

Job description

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

We are seeking an experienced and strategic transactional attorney to join the IP team within our growing legal department. In this role, you will be responsible for the IP side of Anthropic's transactions, partnering with the M&A and commercial counsel who lead each deal. You will conduct IP diligence and negotiate IP terms for our acquisitions and investments, help advise on IP terms in our most complex commercial and research agreements, and drive the playbooks and processes that make our processes scalable. You will partner closely with the Head of IP (direct manager), our M&A and Commercial Legal teams, and Corporate Development on questions and issues that are very often new.

Responsibilities

Lead the IP workstream on acquisitions and strategic investments, from diligence through letters of intent, definitive agreements, closing, and integration, alongside our M&A counsel and outside counsel

Partner with commercial counsel on the IP aspects of complex enterprise, partnership, research collaboration, and vendor agreements, advising on and negotiating IP terms

Serve as the primary point of contact on IP terms for commercial legal and other colleagues, and help train them so they can resolve more IP questions on their own

Drive the playbooks, templates, and processes that let a lean team handle IP terms across a high volume of deals

Contribute to broader IP strategy, particularly where transactions intersect with open source, trade secrets, patents, or new business models

Hold a JD and are an active member of at least one U.S. state bar

Have substantial experience leading IP due diligence and negotiating IP terms in technology M&A

Have first-chair experience negotiating IP provisions in complex commercial technology agreements, such as licenses, joint development agreements, and services agreements

Have the ability to communicate IP risks and tradeoffs clearly to business leaders and non-specialist lawyers, and to exercise sound judgement about when to hold a position

Have strong working knowledge of open source licensing, employee and contractor IP assignment obligations, and trade secret protection

Preferred qualifications

10+ years of transactional IP experience at a nationally recognized law firm, a technology company, or both

Experience building negotiation playbooks, templates, or diligence processes that other lawyers relied on

Experience with AI, machine learning, data licensing, or other emerging technology

Curiosity about AI and a commitment to its responsible development

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.

$335,000 - $385,000 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.

Voluntary Self-Identification

As set forth in Anthropic’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service‑connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three‑year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.