Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

New York City, NY · San Francisco · Seattle, WA · USD 280,000-320,000 / year · Hybrid · Posted Oct 14, 2026

At a glance

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.

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.
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.
You will sit at the frontier of enterprise AI deployments and help shape our forward-deployed motion as it scales.

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.

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.
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, with hands-on experience with LLMs and agents.
Strong programming skills with proficiency in Python and experience shipping production applications.
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.
Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience in a field relevant to the role.

Former technical founders are also encouraged to apply.
Proficiency in one or more additional languages like TypeScript, Java, etc.
A background in financial services, healthcare/life sciences, or another enterprise vertical.

Travel frequently (25%) to customer sites to build in person with customers.
Location-based hybrid policy: currently expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time, though some roles may require more time in our offices.