Research Engineer / Scientist, Pre-training

The posting, as Anthropic wrote it

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

Anthropic is at the forefront of AI research, dedicated to developing safe, ethical, and powerful artificial intelligence. Our mission is to ensure that transformative AI systems are aligned with human interests. We are seeking a Research Engineer to join our Pre-training team, responsible for developing the next generation of large language models. In this role, you will work at the intersection of cutting-edge research and practical engineering, contributing to the development of safe, steerable, and trustworthy AI systems.

Key Responsibilities

Conduct research and implement solutions in areas such as model architecture, algorithms, data processing, and optimizer development

Independently lead small research projects while collaborating with team members on larger initiatives

Design, run, and analyze scientific experiments to advance our understanding of large language models

Optimize and scale our training infrastructure to improve efficiency and reliability

Develop and improve dev tooling to enhance team productivity

Contribute to the entire stack, from low-level optimizations to high-level model design

Qualifications

Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field

Strong software engineering skills with a proven track record of building complex systems

Expertise in Python and experience with deep learning frameworks (PyTorch preferred)

Familiarity with large-scale machine learning, particularly in the context of language models

Ability to balance research goals with practical engineering constraints

Strong problem-solving skills and a results-oriented mindset

Excellent communication skills and ability to work in a collaborative environment

Care about the societal impacts of your work

Preferred Experience

Work on high-performance, large-scale ML systems

Familiarity with GPUs, Kubernetes, and OS internals

Experience with language modeling using transformer architectures

Knowledge of reinforcement learning techniques

Background in large-scale ETL processes

You'll thrive in this role if you

Have significant software engineering experience

Are results-oriented with a bias towards flexibility and impact

Willingly take on tasks outside your job description to support the team

Enjoy pair programming and collaborative work

Are eager to learn more about machine learning research

Are enthusiastic to work at an organization that functions as a single, cohesive team pursuing large-scale AI research projects

Are working to align state of the art models with human values and preferenc
[…]
n our team.

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.

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.