Research Engineer, Cybersecurity RL

Anthropic’s Cybersecurity RL team within Horizons is building reinforcement learning capabilities that improve defensive cybersecurity performance. This Research Engineer role combines research and software engineering to advance model behavior for tasks like secure coding and vulnerability remediation, with an emphasis on safe and beneficial outcomes.

In this hybrid position based in San Francisco, you will help drive new ideas from experiments into production training runs. Horizons focuses on RL research and development that has supported every Claude release, with meaningful impact on autonomy, coding, and reasoning.

Role scope

• Safely advance model capabilities for secure coding, vulnerability remediation, and other defensive cybersecurity tasks.
• Develop novel approaches and translate them into working code.
• Design and implement RL environments for defensive use cases.
• Run experiments and perform evaluations to measure progress.
• Deliver work into production training runs.
• Collaborate with researchers, engineers, and cybersecurity specialists across and outside Anthropic.

What you bring

• Cybersecurity domain expertise, alongside interest or experience training safe AI models.
• Experience in cybersecurity research.
• Experience with machine learning.
• Strong software engineering skills.
• The ability to balance research exploration with engineering implementation.
• Commitment to developing safe and beneficial systems and interest in AI’s potential.

Strong candidate signals

• Professional experience in security engineering, fuzzing, detection and response, or other applied defensive work.
• Experience participating in or building CTF competitions and cyber ranges.
• Academic research experience in cybersecurity.
• Familiarity with RL techniques and environments.
• Familiarity with LLM training methodologies.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience.
• A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience.

Compensation and work setup

• Salary: USD 500,000 - 850,000 per yearly.
• Location: San Francisco, CA (hybrid).
• Hybrid policy: Staff are expected to be in one of Anthropic’s offices at least 25% of the time, with some roles requiring more.

Benefits

• Optional equity donation matching.
• Generous vacation and parental leave.
• Flexible working hours.
• Competitive compensation and benefits.
• Lovely office space for collaboration with colleagues.

Logistics

• Visa sponsorship: Anthropic sponsors visas, though not every role and candidate can be sponsored.
• Fair chance considerations: For roles performing work in California, qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered consistent with applicable laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act.
• Application guidance: Apply even if you do not meet every single qualification.
• Safety: Anthropic recruiters only contact applicants from @anthropic.com email addresses; legitimate recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. Confirm openings at anthropic.com/careers.

About Horizons

• Horizons leads Anthropic’s reinforcement learning (RL) research and development, supporting advances in Anthropic’s AI systems.
• The team has contributed to every Claude release, with significant impact on autonomy, coding, and reasoning capabilities.

About Anthropic

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. The company also provides guidance on candidate AI usage during the application process.