Biological Safety Research Scientist

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

We are looking for biological scientists to help build safety and oversight mechanisms for our AI systems. As a Safeguards Biological Safety Research Scientist, you will apply your technical skills to design and develop safety systems that detect harmful behaviors and prevent misuse by sophisticated threat actors. You will be at the forefront of defining what responsible AI safety looks like in the biological domain, working across research, policy, and engineering to translate complex biosecurity concepts into concrete technical safeguards.

This is a unique opportunity to shape how frontier AI models handle dual‑use biological knowledge—balancing the tremendous potential of AI to accelerate legitimate life‑sciences research while preventing misuse by sophisticated threat actors.

• Design and execute capability evaluations ("evals") to assess the capabilities of new models.
• Collaborate closely with internal and external threat‑modeling experts to develop training data for our safety systems, and with ML engineers to train these safety systems, optimizing for both robustness against adversarial attacks and low false‑positive rates for legitimate researchers.
• Analyze safety system performance in traffic, identifying gaps and proposing improvements.
• Develop rigorous stress‑testing of our safeguards against evolving threats and product surfaces.
• Partner with Research, Product, and Policy teams to ensure biological safety is embedded throughout the model development lifecycle.
• Contribute to external communications, including model cards, blog posts, and policy documents related to biological safety.
• Monitor emerging technologies for their potential to contribute to new risks and new mitigation strategies, and strategically address these.

• A PhD in molecular biology, virology, microbiology, biochemistry, systems or computational biology, or a related life‑sciences field, OR equivalent professional experience.
• Extensive experience in scientific computing and data analysis, with proficiency in programming (Python preferred).
• Deep expertise in modern biology, including both “reading” (e.g., high‑throughput measurement, functional assays) and “writing” (gene synthesis, genome editing, strain construction, protein engineering) techniques.
• Familiarity with dual‑use research concerns, select‑agent regulations, and biosecurity frameworks (e.g., Biological Weapons Convention, Australia Group guidelines).
• Strong analytical and writing skills, with the ability to navigate ambiguity and explain complex technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders.
• Passion for learning new skills and an ability to rapidly adapt to changing techniques and technologies.
• Comfort working in a fast‑paced environment where priorities may shift as AI capabilities evolve.

• Background in AI/ML systems, particularly experience with large language models.
• Experience in developing ML for biological systems.
• Extensive experience in complex projects with multiple stakeholders.

$300,000—$320,000 USD

Education requirements:

We require at least a Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

Location‑based hybrid policy:
We expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. Some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship:
We sponsor visas. If we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to obtain a visa and retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every simple qualification. Researchers from under‑represented groups should not be discouraged from applying.

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from  email addresses. Beware of emails from other domains. Legitimate recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're unsure about a communication, don’t click any links—visit  directly for confirmed position openings.

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space to collaborate with colleagues.