Research Scientist, Societal Impacts

Anthropic • San Francisco, CA

8d • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Societal Impacts research scientist on the Models Research Pod, you'll close the loop between observing Claude's behavior and improving it at the model level. You'll use observational tools like Clio to analyze real-world usage patterns and build evaluations that assess whether Claude provides safe responses aligned with its Constitution . Strong candidates will have experience with machine learning systems and a genuine interest in societal impacts research. You should be adaptable and excited to contribute to evolving team priorities rather than coming in with a fixed agenda. The role is highly cross-functional, with regular collaboration across the fine-tuning, safeguards, policy, and interpretability teams. We're hiring at both junior and senior levels. Senior researchers should be comfortable doing hands-on technical work alongside helping set research direction.

Requirements

• You have experience working with machine learning systems and are comfortable with technical infrastructure for interfacing with models.
• You're adaptable and collaborative, able to take direction and contribute to team priorities rather than needing to pursue a predetermined research agenda.
• You're skilled at writing up and communicating your results, even when they're null or unexpected.
• You find it exciting to partner with colleagues across teams on large-scale projects where the whole company contributes to building and analyzing AI systems.
• You have a background in machine learning, data science, or another technical field that involves generating insights from complex systems.
• You're passionate about translating research insights into actionable recommendations for improving AI systems and informing policy.
• We require at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

• You have an interest in societal impacts research; prior experience in this area is a plus but not required.
• For senior candidates: you're willing to do hands-on work while also helping shape research direction, and you may be interested in management opportunities down the line.

Responsibilities

• Using observational tools like Clio to analyze real-world usage patterns and surface insights about how people interact with Claude.
• Building and running evaluations to assess Claude's behavior across key dimensions of its Constitution , such as safety and quality of advice in high-stakes situations.
• Partnering closely with fine-tuning, safeguards, policy, and interpretability teams to translate research insights into model improvements.
• Generating insights about the societal impact of Anthropic's systems and using this understanding to inform company strategy, research priorities, and policy positions.
• Sharing your work through research publications and external presentations, and developing tools and frameworks that make AI systems more understandable to policymakers, academics, and civil society.

Benefits

• 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees