Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

As a member of the GTM team at Anthropic, you will be a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) who embeds directly with our most strategic customers and leads the technical direction of their AI adoption. Customers bring you in to lead, not only to implement: you decide what should be built, and then make sure it gets built well. You will work with customer teams to ship advanced AI applications that solve real world business problems, and guide the architecture and advisory work that surrounds those builds across an account.

Working closely with our Research, Product, and Engineering teams, you'll combine engineering expertise, an understanding of frontier AI applications, and customer-facing skills to understand customer workflows and develop innovative solutions that address complex business challenges while maintaining our high standards for safety and reliability.

You will sit at the frontier of enterprise AI deployments and help shape our forward-deployed motion as it scales. We expect Staff FDEs to set direction under ambiguity and represent Anthropic at the highest level in customer environments. In this role, you guide architecture and build initiatives across workstreams, working directly with senior technical and business stakeholders and owning outcomes that span an account's roadmap.

You don't need to have shipped agents to production. You do need deep experience building and operating production systems, hands-on time with agents, and the judgment to lead architecture and advisory work with enterprise customers.

Responsibilities

• Own technical strategy for a key account or vertical, in partnership with account and product teams.
• Guide technical architecture and design decisions across multiple concurrent workstreams.
• Lead discovery and advisory engagements independently, shaping scope and technical strategy before a build starts.
• Lead engagements delivered with partners, setting the architecture and the quality bar for work you don't build yourself.
• Review designs and unblock other FDEs on hard technical calls.
• Represent Anthropic to senior technical and business stakeholders, including VPs and C-level, to align on strategy and de-risk delivery.
• Own your engagements end to end: scope the work, sequence it, unblock it, anticipate security and procurement gates, and deliver production systems the customer can operate.
• Work within customer systems to build production applications and agent components with Claude, and hand over systems the customer can run.
• Identify and codify repeatable deployment patterns and contribute insights back to our Product and Engineering teams.
• Build long term relationships with customers and proactively identify new opportunities for AI deployment throughout the lifecycle of an engagement.
• Travel frequently (25%) to customer sites to build in person with customers.
• Be a champion for Anthropic's mission in the field.

You May Be a Good Fit If You Have

• Deep system design and problem decomposition skills: you can walk into a discovery conversation with only a business problem and leave with a defensible technical strategy for a secure, production-ready design inside a complex enterprise environment of legacy systems, with identity and access, and compliance requirements.
• Experience in a senior technical, customer facing role such as Forward Deployed Engineer, or as a Tech Lead with consulting or product experience. Former technical founders are also encouraged to apply.
• A track record as the person a team turns to on ambiguous technical calls, whether through architecture review, pairing, or informal mentorship.
• A track record of directly influencing senior technical and business stakeholders, including VP and C-level, in complex organizations.
• Extensive experience building and operating production systems. Hands-on experience with LLMs and agents is expected. Side projects and prototypes count.
• Strong programming skills with proficiency in Python (and ideally in one or more additional languages like TypeScript, Java, etc), experience shipping production applications, and everyday use of AI coding tools with the judgment to review and steer.
• Experience leading advisory and architecture-review engagements as well as hands-on builds, and running them end to end.
• High agency with an ability to navigate ambiguity present in complex organizations, and the learning velocity to pick up new domains and tools fast.
• Passion for advancing safe, beneficial AI systems through creative technical applications.
• A background in financial services, healthcare/life sciences, or another enterprise vertical are nice to have.