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Anthropic

Research Engineer, Pre-training

Hybrid

London, United kingdom

Internship

04-12-2025

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Skills

Communication Python Kubernetes Problem-solving Research Training Architecture Machine Learning PyTorch Deep Learning Programming Organization Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models ETL Processes

Job Specifications

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.

Anthropic is at the forefront of AI research, dedicated to developing safe, ethical, and powerful artificial intelligence. Our mission is to ensure that transformative AI systems are aligned with human interests. We are seeking a Research Engineer to join our Pretraining team, responsible for developing the next generation of large language models. In this role, you will work at the intersection of cutting-edge research and practical engineering, contributing to the development of safe, steerable, and trustworthy AI systems.

Key Responsibilities

Conduct research and implement solutions in areas such as model architecture, algorithms, data processing, and optimizer development
Independently lead small research projects while collaborating with team members on larger initiatives
Design, run, and analyze scientific experiments to advance our understanding of large language models
Optimize and scale our training infrastructure to improve efficiency and reliability
Develop and improve dev tooling to enhance team productivity
Contribute to the entire stack, from low-level optimizations to high-level model design

Qualifications

Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field
Strong software engineering skills with a proven track record of building complex systems
Expertise in Python and experience with deep learning frameworks (PyTorch preferred)
Familiarity with large-scale machine learning, particularly in the context of language models
Ability to balance research goals with practical engineering constraints
Strong problem-solving skills and a results-oriented mindset
Excellent communication skills and ability to work in a collaborative environment
Care about the societal impacts of your work

Preferred Experience

Work on high-performance, large-scale ML systems
Familiarity with GPUs, Kubernetes, and OS internals
Experience with language modeling using transformer architectures
Knowledge of reinforcement learning techniques
Background in large-scale ETL processes

You'll Thrive In This Role If You

Have significant software engineering experience
Are results-oriented with a bias towards flexibility and impact
Willingly take on tasks outside your job description to support the team
Enjoy pair programming and collaborative work
Are eager to learn more about machine learning research
Are enthusiastic to work at an organization that functions as a single, cohesive team pursuing large-scale AI research projects
Are working to align state of the art models with human values and preferences, understand and interpret deep neural networks, or develop new models to support these areas of research
View research and engineering as two sides of the same coin, and seek to understand all aspects of our research program as well as possible, to maximize the impact of your insights
Have ambitious goals for AI safety and general progress in the next few years, and you’re working to create the best outcomes over the long-term.

Sample Projects

Optimizing the throughput of novel attention mechanisms
Comparing compute efficiency of different Transformer variants
Preparing large-scale datasets for efficient model consumption
Scaling distributed training jobs to thousands of GPUs
Designing fault tolerance strategies for our training infrastructure
Creating interactive visualizations of model internals, such as attention patterns

At Anthropic, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We strongly encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds, including those from underrepresented groups in tech.

If you're excited about pushing the boundaries of AI while prioritizing safety and ethics, we want to hear from you!

The expected base compensation for this position is below. Our total compensation package for full-time employees includes equity, benefits, and may include incentive compensation.

Annual Salary

£250,000—£270,000 GBP

Logistics

Education requirements: We require at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

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 qualif

About the Company

We're an AI research company that builds reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Our first product is Claude, an AI assistant for tasks at any scale. Our research interests span multiple areas including natural language, human feedback, scaling laws, reinforcement learning, code generation, and interpretability. Know more