Research Scientist, Frontier Red Team Cyber

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 Team

The Frontier Red Team (FRT) is a small, focused technical research team within Anthropic's Policy organization. Our goal is to make the entire world safer in an era of advanced AI by understanding what these systems can do and building the defenses that matter. In 2026, we're focused on researching and ensuring safety with self-improving, highly autonomous AI systems, especially ones related to cyberphysical capabilities. See our previous related work on cyberdefense, robotics, and Project Vend. This is early-stage, high-conviction research with the potential for outsized impact.

About The Role

In the last year, we've seen compelling signs that LLMs and agents are increasingly capable of novel cyber capabilities. We think 2026 will be the year where models reach expert-level, even superhuman, in several cybersecurity domains. This is a novel and massive threat surface.

As a Research Scientist, Frontier Red Team Cyber, you'll build the tools and frameworks needed to defend the world against advanced AI-enabled cyber threats. Senior candidates will have the opportunity to shape and grow Anthropic's cyberdefense research program, working with Security, Safeguards, Policy, and other partner teams. This work sits at the intersection of AI capabilities research, cybersecurity, and policy—what we learn directly shapes how Anthropic and the world prepare for AI-enabled cyber threats.

This is applied research with real-world stakes. Your work will inform decisions at the highest levels of the company, contribute to demonstrations that shape policy discourse, and build the technical defenses that we will need for a future of increasingly powerful AI systems.

What You'll Do

• Develop systems, tools, and frameworks for AI-empowered cybersecurity, such as autonomous vulnerability discovery and remediation, malware detection and management, network hardening, and pentesting
• Design and run experiments to elicit and evaluate autonomous AI cyber capabilities in realistic scenarios
• Design and build infrastructure for evaluating and enabling AI systems to operate in security environments
• Translate technical findings into compelling demonstrations and artifacts that inform policymakers and the public
• Collaborate with external experts in cybersecurity, national security, and AI safety to scope and validate research directions
• Senior candidates will also set research strategy, define what problems are worth solving, own the technical roadmap, and manage relationships with cross-functional partners

Sample Projects

• Building frameworks and tools that enable AI models to autonomously find and patch vulnerabilities
• Running purple-team simulations where AI defenders compete against AI attackers in network environments
• Pointing autonomous AI systems at real-world security challenges (bug bounties, CTFs etc.) to characterize risks, defensive potential, and compare to human experts
• Building demonstrations of frontier AI cyber capabilities for policy stakeholders

You May Be a Good Fit If You

• Have deep expertise in cybersecurity or security research
• Are driven to find solutions to complex, high-stakes problems
• Have experience doing technical research with LLM-based agents or autonomous systems
• Have strong software engineering skills, particularly in Python
• Can own entire problems end-to-end, including both technical and non-technical components
• Design and run experiments quickly, iterating fast toward useful results
• Thrive in collaborative environments
• Care deeply about AI safety and want your work to have real-world impact on how humanity navigates advanced AI
• Are comfortable working on sensitive projects that require discretion and integrity
• Have proven ability to lead cross-functional security initiatives and navigate complex organizational dynamics

Strong Candidates May Also Have

• Experience with offensive security research, vulnerability research, or exploit development
• Research or professional experience applying LLMs to security problems
• Track record in competitive CTFs, bug bounties, or other security-related competitions
• Experience building security tools or automation
• Track record of building demos or prototypes that communicate complex technical ideas
• Experience working with external stakeholders (policymakers, government, researchers)
• Familiarity with AI safety research and threat modeling for advanced AI systems

Compensation and Logistics

The annual compensation range for this role is $350,000—$850,000 USD. We require at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience. Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time, operating under a location-based hybrid policy. We do sponsor visas and will make every reasonable effort if an offer is made. We encourage all interested candidates to apply, especially those from underrepresented groups.

How We're Different

At Anthropic, we believe in big science for AI research, working as a single cohesive team on large-scale efforts. We prioritize impact – advancing steerable, trustworthy AI – and view AI research as an empirical science. We are an extremely collaborative group, valuing communication skills and hosting frequent research discussions. Our work continues directions explored prior to Anthropic, including GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Scaling Laws, and Concrete Problems in AI Safety. 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.

Key skills/competency

• AI safety
• Cybersecurity research
• LLM agents
• Python programming
• Vulnerability discovery
• Network hardening
• Pentesting
• Offensive security
• Threat modeling
• Research strategy