Research Engineer, Rule of Law

Anthropic
San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY / San Francisco, CA, San Francisco, California, United States2026-06-24

About the job

As a Research Engineer on the Rule of Law team, you'll conduct technical and sociotechnical research at the intersection of AI and democratic institutions. Your work will span safety evaluations, model improvement, institutional analysis, and the development of novel applications of AI to support civic life and efficient and accountable government. The work will directly contribute to our research publications, policy work, safety systems, and products.

Responsibilities

Design and run AI safety evaluations focused on legal alignment, and conduct technical work (including fine-tuning) to improve targeted aspects of model performance

Leverage AI to analyze institutional vulnerabilities created or exacerbated by AI itself, and develop accompanying sociotechnical mitigations

Develop novel applications of AI to bolster and enrich democratic processes

Conduct rigorous sociotechnical studies on how information furnished by AI can support informed deliberation and debate

Partner closely with researchers, policy and law experts, and other cross-functional teams across Anthropic to advance our safety mission

Translate research insights into actionable recommendations for both product and policy

Qualifications

Minimum

Have deep expertise in AI together with substantive expertise in government, law, political science, or public policy

Have advanced skills in deep learning, together with capabilities in data science, mechanism design, govtech, deliberative tech, or a related field

Deeply understand experimental design, data analysis and inferential statistics

Have at least five years of work experience in academia, industry, or government

Are comfortable navigating the ambiguity inherent to novel research, including settings where the objective itself is hard to define

Have strong technical skills in sociotechnical settings: thinking carefully about human factors, how AI systems interact with groups of humans, and human behavior

Are energized by working at the intersection of technical research and questions of democracy and institutional design

Preferred

Designing and running evaluations or fine-tuning experiments on large language models

Large-scale data analysis

UX and interface design, with an eye toward making complex tools intuitive for non-technical users

Engineering with privacy considerations front of mind

Research relating to deliberative technology, civic technology, or the societal impacts of AI

Working with or within government, courts, legislatures, or public policy institutions