Strategic AI Pre-Sales Programs Lead

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 270,000 - 365,000; Full time

Job summary

Anthropic in San Francisco is seeking our first Pre-Sales Program Lead to design and run programs that qualify and manage opportunities, prioritize across commercial, research, and mission engagements, and accelerate deals to signature.

You’ll own the pursuit-to-signature process, collaborate with sales, legal, finance, and product, and build scalable playbooks and dashboards to drive pipeline health while working with a high-autonomy team dedicated to AI safety and beneficial outcomes.

Qualifications

• Built or scaled the pre-sales side of a services or delivery business—owning qualification, prioritization, and forecasting across a portfolio of concurrent pursuits.
• Fluent working with data, metrics, and reporting to drive decisions.
• Able to defend AI/software services scope with engineering leaders and technical buyers.
• Experience contracting with legal, finance, and procurement to get agreements signed.
• Designed programs/playbooks that others adopted and ran.
• Clear communication with engineers to executives, influencing without authority.
• Thrives in high-ambiguity environments with no existing process.
• Excited about Anthropic's mission to develop safe, beneficial AI.

Responsibilities

• Design, pilot and refine pre-sales programs that run the pipeline across a high-velocity portfolio.
• Own prioritization heuristics shaping the portfolio and trade-offs across commercial, research, and mission engagements.
• Lead the most complex pre-sales pursuits personally while building scalable programs for the broader team.
• Own definition of pursuit-to-signature processes including scoping, proposals, approvals, and legal/finance workflows.
• Build partner coordination motions for pre-sales including subcontracting and co-delivery pursuits.
• Define handoffs from sales to delivery working with Post-Sale Leads to ensure fast Start.
• Create metrics, dashboards and reporting to measure pipeline health, conversion, and cycle time.
• Codify playbooks and self-service programs to reduce bottlenecks.
• Incorporate Claude into proposals, deal qualification, and pipeline tracking.
• Collaborate with Sales, Partnerships, Legal, Finance, Product to keep interfaces clean.

Skills

Forecasting across portfolio

Executive communication

Analytical toolkit

Ambiguity handling

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

CRM

Proposal workflows

Job description

Anthropic in San Francisco is seeking our first Pre-Sales Program Lead to design and run programs that qualify and manage opportunities, prioritize across commercial, research, and mission engagements, and accelerate deals to signature.

You’ll own the pursuit-to-signature process, collaborate with sales, legal, finance, and product, and build scalable playbooks and dashboards to drive pipeline health while working with a high-autonomy team dedicated to AI safety and beneficial outcomes.