[Expression of Interest] Research Manager, Interpretability

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 340,000 - 425,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Generous vacation leave

Flexible working hours

Job summary

A leading AI research company based in San Francisco is seeking a Research Manager for Interpretability to lead a technical team. The role emphasizes project management, team coaching, and contributing to AI safety research. The ideal candidate will have 2-5 years of experience and a background in AI or machine learning, with strong communication skills. The salary range is competitive, offering $340,000—$425,000 annually.

Qualifications

• Minimum 2–5 years of experience managing technical teams.
• Background in machine learning, AI, or related technical field.
• Strong project management skills including prioritization.

Responsibilities

• Team support in achieving safety research goals.
• Partner with research leads for project planning.
• Coach and support team members.

Skills

Project management

People management

Machine learning

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

Job description

Research Manager, Interpretability – Anthropic

Join to apply for the Research Manager, Interpretability role at Anthropic.

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 Interpretability Team

When you see what modern language models are capable of, do you wonder, “How do these things work? How can we trust them?” The Interpretability team’s mission is to reverse engineer how trained models work, and Interpretability research is one of Anthropic’s core research bets on AI safety. We believe that a mechanistic understanding is the most robust way to make advanced systems safe. We focus on mechanistic interpretability, aiming to discover how neural network parameters map to meaningful algorithms. Our work includes addressing superposition, decomposing models into interpretable components, and building circuits to understand mechanisms in Claude language models.

About The Role

As a manager on the Interpretability team, you’ll support a team of expert researchers and engineers who are trying to understand at a deep, mechanistic level how modern large language models work internally. Your work will be critical in ensuring the team meets its ambitious safety research goals. You will partner closely with a research lead to translate cutting‑edge research ideas into tangible goals and oversee their execution, managing team performance, facilitating cross‑team relationships, and driving the hiring pipeline. If you are more interested in direct technical contributions, consider applying for our Research Scientist or Research Engineer roles instead.

Responsibilities

• Partner with a research lead on direction, project planning and execution, hiring, and people development
• Set and maintain a high bar for execution speed and quality, including identifying improvements to processes that help the team operate effectively
• Coach and support team members to have more impact and develop in their careers
• Drive the team’s recruiting efforts, including hiring planning, process improvements, and sourcing and closing
• Help identify and support opportunities for collaboration with other teams across Anthropic
• Communicate team updates and results to other teams and leadership
• Maintain a deep understanding of the team’s technical work and its implications for AI safety

You May Be a Good Fit If You

• Are an experienced manager (minimum 2–5 years) with a track record of effectively leading highly technical research and/or engineering teams
• Have a background in machine learning, AI, or a related technical field
• Actively enjoy people management and are experienced with coaching and mentorship, performance evaluation, career development, and hiring for technical roles
• Have strong project management skills, including prioritization and cross‑functional coordination and collaboration
• Have managed technical teams through periods of ambiguity and change
• Are a quick learner, capable of understanding and contributing to discussions on complex technical topics and are motivated to learn about our research
• Are a strong communicator both in speaking and in writing
• Believe that advanced AI systems could have a transformative effect on the world, and are passionate about helping make sure that transformation goes well

Strong Candidates May Also Have

• Experience scaling engineering infrastructure
• Experience working on open‑ended, exploratory research agendas aimed at foundational insights
• Some familiarity with our work and mechanistic interpretability

Role Specific Location Policy

• This role is expected to be in our SF office for 3 days a week.

Annual Salary

$340,000—$425,000 USD

Logistics

Education requirements: We require at least a Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

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. 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 impostor 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.

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. 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.

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.