Sales Strategy & Operational Excellence Lead

Details

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. The team includes researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

Anthropic is seeking a highly organized, analytically grounded Sales Strategy & Operational Excellence partner to help run the operating system of the go-to-market organization. The role sits at the center of the CCO's operating rhythm and acts as the connective tissue between Sales leadership, Revenue Operations, Finance, and Systems. Responsibilities span weekly forecast and pipeline cadences, quarter-to-quarter target setting and quota deployment, and program-managing the annual planning cycle (territories, capacity, comp, targets).

The ideal candidate can convert tribal knowledge across spreadsheets and Slack into documented standards, manage deadlines across cross-functional partners without direct authority, and build durable operating mechanisms as the model evolves.

Responsibilities

• Run the CCO operating rhythm:
  • Support weekly forecasting and pipeline review cadence: prepare inputs, run mechanics, capture actions, and ensure follow-ups close
  • Own calendar, templates, and pre-read standards for recurring operating reviews (forecast, pipeline, QBRs)
  • Track commitments and risks from operating reviews and drive resolution between meetings
• Unify operating standards across Sales and Strategy:
  • Establish and maintain a single set of operating standards, definitions, tools, and best practices across Sales and Strategy
  • Document core processes (forecasting methodology, pipeline hygiene, deal stage criteria, rules of engagement) and drive adoption through enablement and reinforcement
  • Identify divergences in process or tooling and bring teams back to a common standard without breaking local improvements
• Drive planning, targets, and quota:
  • Program-manage annual and in-year planning: standardize timelines, templates, tooling; serve as central DRI for data aggregation; primary contact for Systems, Finance, HR
  • Support target setting across GTM: build models and manage process translating company plan into segment/region/team numbers
  • Support comp plan design and quota setting: partner with Sales leadership, Finance, Total Rewards on mechanics; manage quota allocation and deployment; ensure quotas reconcile to plan
  • Support territory and capacity planning: maintain headcount-to-coverage view and flag gaps
• Build for scale:
  • Design processes that scale beyond spreadsheets with a clear path to systems
  • Build templates, runbooks, and documentation so operating quality doesn't depend on any single person
  • Partner with Systems and Analytics to move repeatable manual work into tooling, and use Claude to accelerate documentation, data aggregation, and process design

Requirements

• 7+ years in sales operations, sales strategy, revenue operations, business operations, or similar function, with direct experience supporting a sales organization's operating cadence
• Experience running or materially supporting GTM planning end to end: annual planning, target setting, quota allocation, territory design, or comp plan rollout
• Exceptional program management skills: able to take loosely defined cross-functional efforts, create plans, and drive to deadlines across teams without direct authority
• Solid understanding of sales org rhythms: forecasting calls, commit definitions, pipeline coverage, and quota fairness
• Highly structured and detail-oriented while flexible when standards need to bend
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for clear pre-reads and leadership communication
• Fluency in Excel/Sheets (modeling, lookups, structured data) and comfort working in Salesforce
• SQL or Looker experience is a plus but not required
• Energized by bringing order to ambiguity and willing to do unglamorous operational work

Strong candidates may also have

• Experience with sales compensation design (SPIFs, accelerators, plan mechanics) and downstream operational realities
• Exposure to consumption-based or usage-based revenue models
• Familiarity with planning and territory tools (Anaplan, Pigment, Fullcast, or similar)
• A track record of using AI tools to accelerate operational and program management work

Compensation

• Annual Salary: $1 - $2 USD
  • Note: For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings (OTE) range, including both sales commissions/bonuses and annual base salary

Logistics

• Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
• Required field of study: a field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
• Minimum years of experience: will correlate with internal job level requirements
• Location-based hybrid policy: currently expect all staff to be in one of Anthropic's offices at least 25% of the time (some roles may require more office time)
• Visa sponsorship: Anthropic states they do sponsor visas and retain an immigration lawyer, though they note they cannot successfully sponsor visas for every role/candidate

How we're different

Anthropic emphasizes large-scale collaborative AI research, values impact, frequent research discussions, and strong communication skills. They reference recent research directions (GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, Learning from Human Preferences).

Other notes

• The posting encourages applicants who may not meet every listed qualification and highlights diversity and inclusion efforts.
• Candidate guidance about AI usage in the application process is provided via linked policy.