Policy Advocacy - Political Research

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 230,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity donation matching

Generous vacation and parental leave

Flexible working hours

Office in San Francisco

Job summary

Anthropic seeks an experienced public opinion researcher to build and expand its in-house polling and research function. You’ll establish the research function from the ground up with high autonomy, collaborating across policy, communications, and external affairs to ground strategy in stakeholder sentiment.

You will design and manage surveys, analyze data, and translate findings into actionable strategic recommendations that improve campaign effectiveness and policy messaging at scale.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and executing public opinion research, including survey and questionnaire design, sampling approaches, and message testing
• Ability to analyze quantitative and qualitative polling data and translate findings into clear, decision-ready written recommendations
• Experience selecting, briefing, and managing external polling or research vendors
• Strong writing and presentation skills, including distilling complex research for senior, non-technical audiences

Responsibilities

• Develop a comprehensive strategy for our in-house political research function that aligns with Anthropic's policy goals
• Identify, evaluate, and establish relationships with leading research and polling firms, ensuring coverage across demographics, geographies, and political perspectives
• Conduct detailed, proactive research to test core messages, policy proposals, and campaign themes, and to evaluate Anthropic's brand perception and performance
• Execute rapid-response polling to quickly assess Anthropic's messaging strategy in response to external events, policymaker actions, competitive developments, or emerging opportunities
• Work with external affairs colleagues (federal, state, and international) and policy communications to identify research priorities, interpret findings, and translate insights into actionable strategic recommendations
• Develop and maintain a knowledge management system for polling data, insights, and recommendations that ensures findings are accessible and actionable
• Manage polling vendors at scale, including vendor performance management
• Participate in strategy sessions and provide thought partnership on the design of messages, policy proposals, and campaigns ahead of polling and testing
• Create clear, compelling deliverables that distill polling findings into insights and recommendations
• Identify opportunities to build and scale the polling function over time, including staffing needs, process improvements, and capability expansion
• Track and report on the impact and utility of research, measuring how insights translate into more effective campaigns and strategic decisions

Skills

Public opinion research

Survey design

Questionnaire design

Sampling methods

Message testing

Data analysis

Vendor management

Policy understanding

Written communication

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor's degree

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

We are seeking an experienced public opinion researcher to build and expand Anthropic's in-house polling and research function. This role will be fundamental to understanding how key audiences — from policymakers and third-party groups to the general public — perceive and respond to Anthropic's policy positions, messages, and campaigns. This is a foundational role: you'll establish the research function from the ground up, with high autonomy and limited precedent.

The Central Policy team sits at the operational heart of Anthropic's policy function — distinct from government relations and communications, but essential to enabling both. You'll work cross-functionally to ensure our policy and communications strategy is grounded in a rigorous understanding of stakeholder sentiment. The polling insights you generate will directly feed into high-visibility campaigns and will be a key asset in our policy efforts in Washington and beyond.

Anthropic is equal parts research lab, policy think-tank, and technology startup. We care deeply about the safe development of AI systems and build partnerships with governments through proactive, opinionated, substantive policy conversations. This role offers a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of AI policy, bringing rigorous research discipline to policy strategy.

Success in this role means establishing trusted relationships with leading polling firms around the world, delivering high-quality research on a regular cadence, and becoming the internal expert on how key audiences perceive AI, Anthropic, and Anthropic's positions and messages. You'll translate polling insights into strategic recommendations that measurably improve campaign effectiveness, and build scalable processes that allow the function to grow efficiently as demand increases.

Key responsibilities

• Develop a comprehensive strategy for our in-house political research function that aligns with Anthropic's policy goals

• Identify, evaluate, and establish relationships with leading research and polling firms, ensuring coverage across demographics, geographies, and political perspectives

• Conduct detailed, proactive research to test core messages, policy proposals, and campaign themes, and to evaluate Anthropic's brand perception and performance

• Execute rapid-response polling to quickly assess Anthropic's messaging strategy in response to external events, policymaker actions, competitive developments, or emerging opportunities

• Work with external affairs colleagues (federal, state, and international) and policy communications to identify research priorities, interpret findings, and translate insights into actionable strategic recommendations

• Develop and maintain a knowledge management system for polling data, insights, and recommendations that ensures findings are accessible and actionable

• Manage polling vendors at scale, including vendor performance management

• Participate in strategy sessions and provide thought partnership on the design of messages, policy proposals, and campaigns ahead of polling and testing

• Create clear, compelling deliverables that distill polling findings into insights and recommendations

• Identify opportunities to build and scale the polling function over time, including staffing needs, process improvements, and capability expansion

• Track and report on the impact and utility of research, measuring how insights translate into more effective campaigns and strategic decisions

Minimum qualifications

• Experience designing and executing public opinion research, including survey and questionnaire design, sampling approaches, and message testing

• Ability to analyze quantitative and qualitative polling data and translate findings into clear, decision-ready written recommendations

• Experience selecting, briefing, and managing external polling or research vendors

• Strong writing and presentation skills, including distilling complex research for senior, non-technical audiences

Preferred qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience in political or public opinion research, ideally spanning multiple campaign cycles and policy environments

• Corporate public affairs experience, ideally in a highly scrutinized or regulated industry

• Strategic thinking that spots emergent issues, identifies and tests the right messages, and translates those insights into tactical recommendations

• A track record of building relationships with vendors, external experts, and complex stakeholder ecosystems

• Strong organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, maintain clear priorities, and deliver on tight timelines

• Comfort operating in ambiguous environments, taking ownership of problems, and proactively driving initiatives with limited precedent

• A resourceful, collaborative working style and genuine commitment to being a strong teammate

• Passion for AI policy and alignment with Anthropic's safety mission and commitment to responsible AI 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.

Annual Salary: $230,000 — $265,000 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.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

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.