Security Software Engineer Jobs in Washington, DC

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.

About the role

Anthropic is looking for a Biotech Policy Lead to lead our work on the biological dimensions of frontier AI policy. Reporting to the Head of National Security Policy, you will shape and lead Anthropic's external policy posture on biology issues across the U.S. federal government, allied democracies, and the biotech and life sciences community, and will help shape how AI strengthens US competitiveness through biotechnology during a critical period in AI development and governance.

You will serve as Anthropic's principal biotech policy voice with the federal government and Congress, relevant agencies and program offices, and allied government counterparts. You will translate Anthropic's research on frontier model biological capabilities into concrete policy proposals, partnership opportunities, and meaningful contributions to public debates.

Key responsibilities

• Develop strategies for AI to strengthen U.S. and allied bio-innovation capacity and biotechnology competitiveness

• Develop and lead Anthropic's external biotech policy strategy across U.S. federal stakeholders, allied governments, and life sciences sector regulators

• Engage in thought leadership and planning for how increasingly capable AI reshapes the biotechnology landscape — including global competitiveness, supply chain resilience, and equitable access to AI-accelerated medicine, as well as biosecurity

• Support and promote collaborations with biosecurity practitioners and biotech industry players across public and private sectors, including on model testing, red teaming, synthesis-screening partnerships, and defensive deployment of frontier AI in biosurveillance

• Collaborate with technical teams, including CBRNE Safeguards, the Frontier Red Team, and our biology research efforts, to translate biological model research and evaluations into concrete policy proposals, stakeholder education, and public contributions

• Coordinate with national security policymakers on threat intelligence sharing and safeguard implementation, working closely with Anthropic's CBRNE Safeguards team

• Drive "race to the top" dynamics across the AI industry, including engagement with other frontier labs and the Frontier Model Forum on shared bio standards and safeguard adoption

• Build and deepen international biotech partnerships, including with Five Eyes counterparts and multilateral institutions, and contribute to thinking on areas of potential international alignment on biotech competitiveness and biological safety

• Partner closely with the Head of National Security Policy, the broader Public Policy team, Safeguards, the public sector go-to-market team, Legal, Communications, Product, and Research to ensure coherent execution across bio workstreams

Minimum qualifications

• Hold an active TS/SCI clearance or held one in the last two years, and have the ability to obtain and maintain one

• Have working knowledge of both biotech and biosecurity policy — e.g., bio-innovation capacity, synthesis-screening infrastructure, regulatory pathway reform

• Bring deep familiarity with the institutions and authorities that shape U.S. biotech policy, including FDA, NIH, DoW, USDA, Commerce, DOE, NSC, and relevant Congressional committees, as well as allied bio-relevant agencies

• Have a track record of effective, information-rich advocacy with biotech regulators, sector agencies, and Congressional committees of jurisdiction

• Possess scientific fluency in the biological sciences sufficient to engage credibly with technical researchers and translate AI and bio capabilities for policy audiences, whether through formal training or sustained professional work on biotechnologies

• Have experience designing and advocating for concrete bio policy and regulatory proposals

• Are adept at working with diverse cross-functional teams, including but not limited to technical research, go-to-market, trust and safety, legal, product, communications, and marketing

• Possess exceptional written and verbal communication skills, particularly when briefing senior policymakers and government officials

• Are high-agency, able to develop and execute strategy independently while accounting for dependencies across teams

• Have demonstrated interest and experience in a complicated technical subject (ideally AI, but other examples could be synthetic biology, genomics, or medical countermeasure development)

Preferred qualifications

• Have 10+ years of experience in biotech or biosecurity policy roles across government, the private sector, or both, with senior-level exposure to U.S. federal policymaking and international counterparts

• Experience contributing to national biotech strategy frameworks (e.g., National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative, synthesis-screening standards, FDA modernization proposals)

• Experience leading or supporting public-private partnerships on biotech capacity at scale

• Direct prior experience in biotech roles at HHS, DoW, Commerce, NSC, or comparable allied biotech institutions

• Familiarity with biotech industrial dynamics across pharma, agriculture, and industrial biomanufacturing sectors

• Experience assessing dual-use technology risks, including early work on AI-enabled biological risks

• Experience engaging international partners on biotech policy and biological threat reduction

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we 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 single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.

How we're different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

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 in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.