Research Scientist, Life Sciences (Computational)

anthropic; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 263,000 - 357,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Visa sponsorship

Job summary

Anthropic is expanding its Life Sciences team, merging computational biology with frontier AI capabilities to advance AI-driven biological discovery. As an early computational member, you will design analyses across large datasets, build pipelines, and collaborate with experimentalists, all while leveraging Claude to inform model improvement and product teams.

The role emphasizes breadth and impact, offering opportunities to shape AI applications in biomedicine and participate in cutting-edge

Qualifications

• PhD in computational biology or related field required.
• Experience leading end-to-end computational biology research with measurable impact.
• Breadth across multiple areas of computational biology is valued.
• Proficiency in one or more scientific programming languages and large dataset handling in Linux/cloud environments.
• Ability to scope ambiguous biological questions and deliver actionable results for experiments.

Responsibilities

• Build, run, and maintain computational pipelines for large-scale biology projects.
• Collaborate with experimental biologists to plan and interpret experiments.
• Develop hypotheses from literature and data to guide experiments.
• Maintain computational infrastructure and data interfaces for researchers and AI agents.
• Utilize Claude and internal frameworks to evaluate model performance and provide findings to teams.
• Balance breadth across projects with flexible prioritization.
• Communicate results clearly to biologists and ML researchers.

Skills

PhD in computational biology

Computational biology research

Python

Data analysis

Biology collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree

PhD in relevant field

Job description

Research Scientist, Life Sciences (Computational)

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 team

Anthropic's Life Sciences team is building a world‑class research group focused on making fundamental biological discoveries. The team combines cutting‑edge AI with hands‑on biological research, positioning Anthropic at the forefront of AI‑accelerated scientific discovery.

About the role

We're seeking an exceptional Research Scientist to join the team. This role combines deep computational biology expertise with frontier AI capabilities, positioning Anthropic at the forefront of AI‑driven scientific discovery.

As one of the first computational members of this Life Sciences research group, you'll work on a high‑impact team that operates at the intersection of computational and experimental biology. You'll bring broad computational biology experience to bear across the team's projects, driving discoveries from large‑scale computational analysis of biological data through to results our experimental scientists can test, and moving flexibly between problems as the science demands. You'll have substantial access to Claude and you'll help establish how computational biology operates at Anthropic.

This role offers a unique opportunity to shape how AI transforms biological research. You'll work with some of the world's best AI researchers while tackling problems that matter deeply for scientific understanding and biomedicine. If you're excited about using your computational expertise to make fundamental biological discoveries and guide the development of transformative AI systems, we want to hear from you.

Key responsibilities

• Build, run, and maintain the analysis pipelines that back the team's experimental programs: sequence analysis at petabyte scale, structural bioinformatics, phylogenetic and comparative genomics, design and analysis of high‑throughput functional screens, biological sequence modeling, etc.
• Partner directly with experimental biologists to design experiments that produce high‑quality data, and turn results around fast enough to immediately inform the next experiment
• Draw on the literature and curated biological knowledge bases alongside primary data to generate and prioritize hypotheses for experimental follow‑up
• Stand up and maintain the team's computational infrastructure: data ingestion, workflow orchestration, internal databases, and the interfaces that make all of it accessible to both researchers and AI agents
• Use Claude and our internal agent frameworks heavily in your own work, and feed what you learn back to the model‑improvement and product teams as evaluations, datasets, and concrete failure cases
• Pick up analyses across projects as priorities shift; we're looking for breadth and flexibility over a single deep specialty
• Have a PhD in computational biology, bioinformatics, genomics, biophysics, machine learning, computer science, or a related quantitative or biological field, or equivalent industry research experience
• Have a track record of computational biology research you have led end to end, from question to result, with evidence of impact (for example publications, preprints, released datasets or tools, or research that changed a program's direction)
• Have demonstrated breadth across multiple areas of computational biology
• Are proficient in one or more programming languages used in scientific computing and comfortable working on large datasets in Linux and cloud compute environments
• Can take an ambiguous biological question, scope the analysis, and produce a result an experimentalist can act on
• Communicate computational results clearly to both biologists and ML researchers

Preferred qualifications

• Are comfortable navigating ambiguity and developing solutions in rapidly evolving research environments
• Are results‑oriented, with a bias towards flexibility and impact
• Hands‑on experience in experimental biology, or a track record of designing experiments side by side with experimentalists
• Experience building tools, pipelines, or agentic systems on top of LLMs, or training models on biological sequence data
• Deep expertise in one or two areas of computational biology (for example structural biology, metagenomics, single‑cell genomics, or protein design) on top of the required breadth

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.

$300,000 – $320,000 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 sponsor visas, but not all roles can be sponsored. We will make every reasonable effort to obtain a visa if you receive an offer.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates 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.

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.