Political Economist, Rule of Law

Location: San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY; Washington, DC About Anthropic 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. About the role Anthropic has done pioneering work examining the economic impacts of AI. The AI & Rule of Law team takes an analogous approach to a different question: how will AI affect our constitutional democratic institutions? Increasingly powerful AI systems will put pressure on societal functions at every level — the courts, legislatures, electoral systems, oversight bodies, and the legal frameworks that hold democratic governance together. Our team exists to ask hard questions about those vulnerabilities, and to seek out strategies for protecting democratic freedoms — in the short and long term, through both technical and policy levers. This is early, high-stakes research. The team is small, the problems are genuinely unsolved, and the work will matter. We are looking for someone with deep expertise in both AI and at least one of: law, government, political science, or public policy. The ideal candidate understands the technical landscape well enough to reason about AI capabilities and risks, and understands democratic institutions well enough to see where those risks become structural threats. Key responsibilities Projects on this team are illustrative rather than fixed — we expect the research agenda to evolve as both AI capabilities and institutional pressures change. Current and expected focus areas include: AI safety evaluations with a legal alignment lens — developing frameworks to assess whether frontier AI systems behave consistently with constitutional norms, due process, and rule-of-law principles Institutional vulnerability analysis — identifying where AI creates novel pressure points in democratic governance, and proposing both policy and technical mitigations Novel legal issues in frontier AI — mapping the unsettled legal terrain created by capable AI systems, including questions of liability, agency, and institutional authority Applications that bolster democratic processes — developing or identifying ways AI could strengthen civic participation, legislative capacity, or judicial function You will use Claude aggressively and creatively throughout this work — as a research tool, a thought partner, and a subject of inquiry Minimum qualifications A primary degree in law, political science, or a closely related field at the Ph.D. level or equivalent — OR extensive government experience at a leadership level Demonstrated ability to produce rigorous, public-facing work — scholarship, policy analysis, government output, or a published body of writing Preferred qualifications Experience at the intersection of legal or political theory and emerging technology A track record of working across disciplines — a legal scholar who has engaged seriously with AI, or a policy official who has worked on technology governance Comfort operating with significant autonomy in an environment where the problems are new and the playbook is still being written At least five years of relevant experience in academia, industry, or government Some Examples of Our Recent Work Preparing for the 2026 US midterms Measuring political bias in Claude Clio: Privacy-preserving insights into AI use Introducing The Anthropic Institute The annual compensation range for this role is listed below. For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role. Annual Salary: $295,000 — $345,000 USD Logistics Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an 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: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices. Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this. For roles performing work in California: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records or criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed.  Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team. Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings. How we're different We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills. The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences. Come work with us! Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.