Manager of Forward Deployed Engineering, Anthropic
£255-325k
OTE
+ Optional equity donation matching
More information about location
AI safety and research company
Be an early applicant
AI safety and research company
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
£255-325k
OTE
+ Optional equity donation matching
More information about location
1001+ employees
Company mission
To create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
Role
Who you are
- This role requires someone who thrives in ambiguity and is energized by building from zero to one
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering, solutions architecture, or a technical customer-facing role such as forward deployed engineering or consulting
- 2+ years of people management experience within a services/post-sales/FDE organization with a track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong engineers
- Experience building organizations from 0->1, not just inheriting an existing one
- Experience working directly with enterprise customers on technical implementations, including comfort navigating complex organizational dynamics
- Executive presence with the ability to move fluidly between strategic conversations with senior stakeholders and hands-on debugging sessions with engineers
- Strong written and verbal communication skills. You can translate technical complexity into clear narratives for diverse audiences
- Genuine excitement about building something new and defining what great looks like for a team that doesn't yet exist
- 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
- 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
- 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
What the job involves
- Anthropic is building the Applied AI team to help the world's most ambitious organizations adopt Claude in ways that are transformative, safe, and lasting
- Our Forward Deployed Engineers embed directly with strategic customers to ship production AI applications that solve real business problems. As this practice grows, we need a founding leader to build and scale it
- As the first FDE Manager, you'll own the team that sits at the frontier of enterprise AI deployment. You'll hire and develop a high-performing team of FDEs, set the technical and operational bar for customer engagements, and build the playbooks that turn one-off successes into repeatable patterns
- You'll work hand-in-hand with Engagement Managers who own delivery logistics and stakeholder management, while you ensure your team is shipping quality code, growing technically, and representing Anthropic at the highest level in customer environments
- This is a player-coach role with a strong bias toward leadership. You'll stay close enough to the technical work to review architectures, debug production issues, and pair with your team when it matters — but your primary impact will come from the people you hire, the standards you set, and the culture you create
- You'll partner cross-functionally with Sales, Product, and Engineering to shape how Anthropic serves its most strategic customers, and your team's field insights will directly influence product direction
- You'll be defining what good looks like for FDE management at Anthropic — there is no existing playbook to follow
- Hire, develop, and retain a world-class team of Forward Deployed Engineers. Set a high bar for technical talent and customer instincts
- Conduct regular 1:1s, provide technical mentorship, and invest in the career growth of each team member. Create an environment where FDEs do the best work of their careers
- Staff and oversee customer engagements across your team's portfolio, making resource allocation decisions that balance customer needs, team development, and business priorities
- Collaborate with account teams and Engagement Managers during the pre-sales process to qualify engagements, scope work, and inform statements of work
- Review technical architectures and code produced by your FDEs, ensuring the team ships high-quality, production-ready solutions that solve real customer problems
- Stay hands-on enough to lead technical discovery sessions, prototype solutions, and debug complex issues alongside your team when needed
- Build repeatable playbooks, starter repositories, integration templates, and an internal knowledge base that captures what your team learns in the field
- Define team OKRs that tie to customer success outcomes and product adoption goals. Create operational cadences — standups, retros, engagement reviews — that keep the team aligned
- Partner with Product and Engineering to translate field insights into product improvements. Serve as the voice of the customer in internal planning
- Travel to customer sites as needed (25-50%), particularly during engagement kickoffs and for your team's highest-priority accounts
- You'll be a founding leader of a team that defines how enterprises adopt and scale AI. Your work will directly influence Anthropic's product direction, create reusable patterns for the broader customer base, and establish Anthropic as the trusted partner for AI transformation — all while advancing the responsible development of frontier AI systems
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Funded by Google and founded by ex-OpenAI employees, Anthropic has emerged as one of the leading companies in AI, focused on building reliable and safe AI systems. Since its launch, the company has rapidly grown into a major player in the industry, with its AI assistant Claude now widely recognized as a strong competitor to ChatGPT.
Like other chatbots, Claude is accessible through a conversational interface and supports a wide range of text-generation and reasoning tasks. A key point of differentiation remains its emphasis on safety, with Anthropic's "Constitutional AI" approach aiming to produce more aligned and less harmful outputs than earlier generations of AI systems.
While Claude has received significant praise for its performance and alignment, some users have notes areas for improvement, particularly in technical domains such as complex mathematics and precision in grammar. However, with substantial backing freom major tech players and multi-billion-dollar funding rounds, Anthropic has firmly established itself as a long-term competitor in the AI space.
Now the company is continuing to refine Claude's capabilities while expanding globally, including growing its presence in Europe. And its ongoing commitment to responsible AI development put it in a position to be not just a competitor, but a key influence on the direction of the industry as a whole.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
190% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 15 rounds)
May 2026
$65bn
SERIES H
Feb 2026
$30bn
SERIES G
Total funding: $124.3bn
Company benefits
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents
- Inclusive fertility benefits via Carrot Fertility
- 22 weeks of paid parental leave
- Flexible paid time off and absence policies
- Mental health support for you and your dependents
- Competitive salary and equity packages
- Optional equity donation matching at a 1:1 ratio, up to 25% of your equity grant
- Retirement plans with competitive matching
- Life and income protection plans
- $500/month flexible wellness and time saver stipend
- Commuter benefits
- Annual education stipend
- Home office stipends
- Relocation support for those moving for Anthropic
- Daily meals and snacks in the office
Company HQ
SoMa, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Dario Amodei
(Co-Founder & CEO)Prior to co-founding Anthropic in 2021, Dario spent almost 5 years at OpenAI as a Team Lead for AI safety and as the Vice President of Research. They also worked as a Research Scientist at Google.
Jared Kaplan
(Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer)Jared hs been a Professor at John Hopkins University since 2012. They are also an experienced Researcher having worked previously at OpenAI and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Jack Clark
(Co-Founder)Jack is an experienced Reporter having worked previously at the Register and Bloomberg. They also worked for OpenAI in Strategy and Communications and as a Policy Director.
Sam McCandlish
(Co-Founder & CTO)Sam graduated from Stanford University with a PhD in Theoretical Physics. They previously worked as a Research Lead at OpenAI.
Tom Brown
(Co-Founder)Tom previously worked as a Member of the Technical Staff for both OpenAI and Google Brain.
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