Autonomous Systems Security Engineer

Anthropic•San Francisco, CA

3h•$320,000 - $405,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Anthropic is hiring an Autonomous Systems Security Engineer to secure the autonomous platforms and detection systems used across its data center footprint, including Anthropic-operated sites and partner-operated sites. The engineer will own drones, ground robots, automated vehicles, and systems that detect uncrewed aircraft or machines operating near a site. The role covers security of automation inside secure areas as well as detection and evidence handling; interdiction is explicitly outside its scope. The engineer will set the approach, choose and integrate platforms and sensors, define vendor requirements, and operate the systems after deployment. This includes establishing an operating model in which operators assign missions and machines execute them, and creating procedures for turning detections into identified tracks and evidence-backed handoffs to the appropriate airspace authority. The goal is continuously verified coverage, fleet health, and evidence, with tools and AI agents handling routine triage. The role favors simple, standard, verifiable controls and expects the use of Claude in engineering workflows. The engineer will collaborate with DCSE physical security systems and security monitoring platform engineers; Anthropic data center operations and legal teams; site operators; equipment vendors; and aviation and public safety authorities. The position is based in San Francisco, with US remote applicants considered, and requires regular travel to critical-infrastructure data center sites.

Requirements

Hands-on experience engineering autonomous or sensing systems in the field, such as drones, ground robots, automated vehicles, or RF, radar, or optical detection sensors; must have selected, integrated, or secured them for an operation others relied on and verified their performance against real targets or runs.
Experience integrating systems built by others, including vendor APIs, SDKs, appliances, and machine or sensor telemetry, into a platform designed to outlast any individual component.
Ability to read and review code, design data systems for security tooling, and build automation, often using AI coding agents, Git, and code review.
Hands-on experience doing this work for data centers, critical infrastructure, or a large hardware fleet.
Experience designing within regulatory or safety constraints, such as aviation, spectrum, privacy, or machine safety, and explaining decisions driven by those constraints.
Ability to own a domain end to end, including setting the approach, working with vendors, site operators, partners, and authorities, and running it as an operationally dependable system.
Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience.
Relevant field of study, demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience.

Nice To Haves

Remote pilot certification, such as FAA Part 107, and experience flying beyond visual line of sight under a waiver or exemption.
Experience with counter-drone (counter-UAS) detection, airspace surveillance, or air traffic data systems.
Experience operating a robot, drone, or automated-vehicle fleet in an industrial, logistics, or data center setting, including fleet management, mission planning, and safety cases.
Experience securing embedded, operational technology, or robotic systems, including device identity, network segmentation, update control, and logging.
Experience with physical security operations at large sites, law enforcement or aviation authorities, or sites not fully controlled by the employer, such as cloud, colocation, or GPU cloud operators.
Experience building AI agents or automation that replaced recurring manual work.

Responsibilities

Own autonomous security and inspection platforms, including drones, ground robots, and other autonomous systems used for perimeter patrol, incident response, and infrastructure inspection; manage platform selection, operating models, operator qualification, maintenance, and machine-to-analyst data flows.
Build integrations that feed detections, tracks, telemetry, and fleet health into the security monitoring platform, along with tools and AI agents to triage detections, check fleet health, and assemble evidence.
Engineer systems for detecting uncrewed systems near sites, including sensor selection and live-target evaluation, per-site coverage, classification, false-alarm handling, and evidence-retaining handoff procedures.
Design security controls for automated vehicles, robots, and similar machines operating inside secure areas, covering identity and access, network isolation, recording and data handling, fail-secure behavior, chain of custody, and acceptance before site entry.
Determine site-specific limits and permissions for sensing, flying, driving, recording, and retaining data under applicable aviation, spectrum, privacy, and safety rules; obtain waivers and approvals and coordinate with local authorities.
Define and test heartbeats, loss-of-coverage and lost-link alarms, and fail-secure behavior so that silent sensors or machines are reported as faults.
Write vendor requirements, evaluate systems against live flights and runs, and hold vendors accountable for delivered performance.
Set the approach for the domain, work with vendors, site operators, partners, and authorities, and operate systems that people rely on every day.