Pre-Sales Program Lead, Forward Deployed Engineering

Anthropic•San Francisco, NY

20d•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, optimizing the pursuit-to-signature process (including legal and finance workflows), and defining partner coordination strategies. The position operates with high autonomy, in direct partnership with Forward Deployed Engineering leadership, and will collaborate closely with a Post-Sale Program Lead counterpart to ensure a seamless handoff between pre- and post-sale engagement phases. The ideal candidate thrives in a high-demand environment and is motivated by the challenge of building efficient processes for rapid deal closure.

Requirements

Proven experience building or scaling the pre-sales side of a services or delivery business (e.g., professional services, consulting, solutions, field engineering), including ownership of qualification, prioritization, and forecasting for a portfolio of concurrent pursuits.
Sufficient technical fluency to scope and defend AI and software services work with engineering leaders and technical buyers.
Experience managing complex deals through contracting, including collaboration with legal, finance, and procurement stakeholders.
Demonstrated ability to design and implement program structures, playbooks, or cadences that are adopted and utilized by others.
Strong analytical skills, including fluency in working with data, establishing metrics and reporting from scratch, and using data to drive decisions.
Clear and credible communication skills, effective with audiences ranging from engineers to executives.
Ability to influence without authority across different 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.
Background in AI or technical professional services, with the technical fluency to reason about modern AI product capabilities.
Experience establishing pre-sales tooling and systems (CRM, proposal/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 pipeline management, including opportunity generation, qualification, routing, pursuit, and win strategies for a high-velocity portfolio.
Own and develop prioritization heuristics to guide portfolio decisions across commercial, research, and mission-oriented engagements, ensuring transparency for leadership.
Lead complex and high-stakes pre-sales pursuits personally, while simultaneously building scalable programs for a growing team.
Define and own the pursuit-to-signature process, encompassing scoping, proposal development, approvals, and legal/finance workflows for efficient contract signing.
Build partner coordination motions for pre-sales, including determining when to hand off opportunities, team up, or manage subcontract/co-delivery pursuits.
Define the process for deal handoffs from sales to delivery, collaborating with the Post-Sale Programs Lead to ensure delivery teams have necessary information.
Establish metrics, dashboards, and reporting to track pipeline health, conversion, cycle time, and portfolio mix, using data to drive continuous improvement.
Codify team pursuit processes into playbooks and self-service programs to enable organizational growth without bottlenecks.
Integrate Claude into proposal development, deal qualification, and pipeline tracking to set standards for AI-native operations.
Partner with Sales, Partnerships, Legal, Finance, and Product teams to ensure clean and predictable pre-sales interfaces.