Autonomous Systems Security Engineer

Details

Engineer and own autonomous systems security across Anthropic's data center footprint, including drones, ground robots, automated vehicles, and detection systems. The role covers platform and sensor selection, vendor integration, security controls, fleet operations, monitoring, evidence collection, and regulatory compliance. The position is based in San Francisco, with remote applicants in the United States considered, and requires regular travel to critical-infrastructure data center sites.

Responsibilities

• Own drones, ground robots, and other autonomous platforms used for perimeter patrol, incident response, and infrastructure inspection.
• Define platform selection, operating models, operator qualification, maintenance, and the data path from machines to analysts.
• Integrate detections, tracks, telemetry, and fleet health data into the security monitoring platform.
• Build tools and AI agents to triage detections, monitor fleet health, and assemble evidence.
• Engineer sensing systems to detect, identify, and classify uncrewed systems operating near sites, including sensor evaluation against live targets, coverage planning, and false-alarm handling.
• Secure automated vehicles, robots, and similar machines operating inside secure areas through identity and access controls, network isolation, recording and data-handling controls, fail-secure behavior, chain-of-custody integration, and site acceptance procedures.
• Establish requirements and operating constraints for sensing, flying, driving, recording, and retaining data under aviation, spectrum, privacy, and safety regulations.
• Define and test heartbeats, loss-of-coverage and lost-link alarms, and fail-secure behavior.
• Write vendor requirements, evaluate systems against live flights and runs, and validate vendor deliverables.
• Collaborate with physical security systems engineers, security monitoring platform engineers, data center operations, legal teams, site operators, equipment vendors, and aviation and public safety authorities.

Requirements

• Experience engineering autonomous or sensing systems in the field, including drones, ground robots, automated vehicles, RF, radar, or optical detection sensors.
• Experience selecting, integrating, or securing systems used in an operational environment and verifying their behavior against real targets or runs.
• Experience integrating vendor APIs, SDKs, appliances, machine telemetry, and sensor telemetry into durable platforms.
• Ability to read and review code, design data systems for security tooling, and build automation using Git and code review.
• Hands-on experience with data centers, critical infrastructure, or large hardware fleets.
• Experience designing within aviation, spectrum, privacy, machine-safety, or similar regulatory and safety constraints.
• Experience owning a technical domain end to end, including work with vendors, site operators, partners, and authorities.
• Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Remote pilot certification, such as FAA Part 107, and experience flying beyond visual line of sight under a waiver or exemption.
• Experience with counter-drone detection, airspace surveillance, or air traffic data systems.
• Experience operating robot, drone, or automated-vehicle fleets in industrial, logistics, or data center environments.
• Experience securing embedded, operational technology, or robotic systems, including device identity, network segmentation, update control, and logging.
• Experience with physical security operations at large sites, law enforcement or aviation authorities, or cloud, colocation, or GPU cloud operators.
• Experience building AI agents or automation that replaces recurring manual work.

Compensation

• Annual salary: $320,000–$405,000 USD.

Work Policy and Logistics

• Remote-friendly, with the role based in San Francisco and remote applicants in the United States considered.
• Staff are currently expected to work from an Anthropic office at least 25% of the time.
• Regular travel to data center sites is required.
• Anthropic explicitly states that it sponsors visas and will make reasonable efforts to obtain a visa for an offered candidate, although sponsorship is not guaranteed for every role or candidate.