Manager of Applied AI Architecture, Startups

USD 315,000-380,000 per year
MIDDLE
✅ Hybrid
✅ Visa Sponsorship

Used Tools & Technologies

Not specified

Required Skills & Competences

Python @ 5 Hiring @ 3 Leadership @ 3 People Management @ 3 Communication @ 3 API @ 3 Technical Leadership @ 3 LLM @ 3 AI @ 3

Details

Anthropic is building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. The Manager of Startups Applied AI Architects will lead a team of technical architects focused on helping startups build AI-native products with the Claude Developer Platform. The role combines technical leadership, hands-on pre-sales engagement, and people management to drive Claude API adoption across early-stage customers and to translate startup signals into product and engineering priorities.

Responsibilities

  • Lead, develop, and grow a team of Startups Applied AI Architects, setting a high bar for technical credibility, customer impact, and startup-paced execution.
  • Drive team performance with clear goals, coaching, and a culture of continuous technical development.
  • Personally lead pre-sales engagements with high-priority startup accounts from initial technical discovery through deployment and expansion.
  • Create and own technical playbooks: running technical evaluations, building customer-specific evaluation frameworks, and architecting LLM solutions for resource-constrained early-stage teams.
  • Partner with Account Executives and GTM leadership to shape segment strategy and drive Claude API adoption across the startup ecosystem.
  • Surface insights on how startups are building with Claude (use cases, deployment patterns, architectural decisions) and translate those into actionable feedback for Product and Engineering.
  • Influence cross-functional partners in Sales, Product, and Engineering to advance startup customer needs and roadmap priorities.
  • Build Anthropic's technical presence in the startup ecosystem through events, conferences, workshops, and content.
  • Stay current with the AI engineering landscape: context engineering, evaluation frameworks, agentic architectures, and developer tooling.

Requirements

  • 8+ years of experience in technical customer-facing roles (Solutions Architect, Sales Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, or similar), with 5+ years leading and managing pre-sales or technical go-to-market teams.
  • Proven track record of building and developing high-performing solutions architecture / applied AI teams, including hiring and coaching.
  • Deep experience working with startups or high-growth technology companies and understanding technical decision-making across stages.
  • Hands-on experience building and deploying LLM-powered applications; builder credibility to earn trust of technical buyers.
  • Hands-on expertise with context engineering, LLM evaluation frameworks, and modern AI architectures; ability to guide teams and customers from prototype to production.
  • Comfortable with Python and fluent in LLM frameworks, tools, and integration patterns common in startup engineering stacks.
  • Comfortable working in ambiguous, fast-moving environments; able to define playbooks and adapt as the segment evolves.
  • Genuine commitment to building AI that is safe and societally beneficial.

Strong candidates may have

  • Experience as a technical founder or in a founder-led sales motion.
  • Successful track record winning competitive technical evaluations against other LLM providers.
  • Experience building foundational team infrastructure: hiring frameworks, onboarding programs, technical playbooks, and coaching systems.
  • Deep familiarity with how developer infrastructure procurement evolves from seed through Series B.
  • A visible technical presence in the startup or AI engineering community (talks, written content, open-source contributions).

Compensation

  • Annual Salary: $315,000 - $380,000 USD

Logistics

  • Minimum education: Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience.
  • Location-based hybrid policy: staff expected to be in one of Anthropic's offices at least 25% of the time.
  • Minimum years of experience: will correlate with internal job level requirements for the position.
  • Anthropic states they sponsor visas and retain an immigration lawyer to assist when they extend an offer.

About Anthropic & Benefits

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. They offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a collaborative office environment. The company emphasizes working on a few large-scale research efforts and values communication and cross-functional collaboration.