Pre-Sales Program Lead, Forward Deployed Engineering

Anthropic•Seattle, WA

20d•$270,000 - $365,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Anthropic is seeking its first Pre-Sales Program Lead to establish and manage the programs that guide opportunities from initial interest to signed contracts. This foundational role involves building pipeline qualification and management mechanisms, developing prioritization strategies for a capacity-constrained team, streamlining the pursuit-to-signature process (including legal and finance workflows), and defining partner coordination strategies. The position offers high autonomy and direct collaboration with Forward Deployed Engineering leadership, with significant growth potential as the function expands. The ideal candidate thrives in a high-demand environment and is motivated by the challenge of creating efficient processes for rapid deal closure.

Requirements

Experience building or scaling the pre-sales side of a services or delivery business (professional services, consulting, solutions, or field engineering), owning qualification, prioritization, and forecasting.
Technical fluency to scope and defend AI and software services work with engineering leaders and technical buyers.
Experience taking complex deals through contracting, working with legal, finance, and procurement stakeholders.
Experience designing programs, playbooks, or cadences that were adopted and utilized by others.
Strong analytical toolkit, fluency in working with data, experience establishing metrics and reporting, and using data to drive decisions.
Clear and credible communication skills with diverse audiences (engineers to executives).
Ability to influence without authority across functions.
Comfort working in high-ambiguity environments and building processes where none exist.
Excitement about Anthropic's mission to develop safe and beneficial AI.

Nice To Haves

Experience with partner-involved deal motions (subcontracting, co-delivery, teaming, channel handoffs).
Experience as the first programs or operations hire, or building such a function from scratch, at a rapidly scaling company.
Experience hiring, developing, and leading programs or operations teams.
Experience in AI or technical professional services with technical fluency to reason about modern AI products.
Experience establishing pre-sales tooling and systems (CRM, proposal and approval workflows).
Extensive experience in deal operations, revenue programs, or services go-to-market at a high-growth technology company.

Responsibilities

Design, pilot, and refine pre-sales programs for Forward Deployed Engineering's pipeline, covering opportunity generation, qualification, routing, pursuit, and win strategies.
Own prioritization heuristics to shape the portfolio, making deliberate trade-offs across commercial, research, and mission-oriented engagements, and communicating these trade-offs to leadership.
Lead complex and high-stakes pre-sales pursuits personally, while simultaneously building programs for a growing team.
Own the definition of the pursuit-to-signature process, including scoping, proposal development, approvals, and legal/finance workflows.
Build partner coordination motions for pre-sales, determining when to hand off opportunities, team up, or manage subcontract/co-delivery pursuits.
Define the process for handing off deals from sales to delivery, collaborating with the Post-Sale Programs Lead.
Establish metrics, dashboards, and reporting to measure pipeline health, conversion, cycle time, and portfolio mix, using data to drive continuous improvement.
Codify team pursuit processes into playbooks and self-service programs.
Integrate Claude into proposals, deal qualification, and pipeline tracking.
Partner across Sales, Partnerships, Legal, Finance, and Product to ensure clean and predictable pre-sales interfaces.