Application Guide
How to Apply for Research Scientist, Interpretability
at Anthropic
🏢 About Anthropic
Anthropic is a frontier AI research company specifically focused on building safe, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Unlike many AI companies, they prioritize alignment, policy, and security as core components of their mission, making them unique for researchers who want to work on AI safety as a primary goal rather than an afterthought. Their public stance on carefully considering the ethical implications of working at frontier AI labs (referenced in their 80,000 Hours career review) suggests a thoughtful, mission-driven culture.
About This Role
As a Research Scientist on the Interpretability team, you'll be reverse-engineering how trained language models work at a mechanistic level, essentially doing 'neuroscience' or 'reverse engineering' of neural networks to understand their internal algorithms. This role is impactful because mechanistic interpretability is seen by Anthropic as the most robust path to making advanced AI systems safe and trustworthy, directly contributing to their mission of creating reliable AI.
💡 A Day in the Life
A typical day might involve designing and running experiments to reverse-engineer specific capabilities in language models, analyzing activation patterns to discover meaningful circuits or features, and building or improving tools for mechanistic analysis. You'd likely collaborate with other researchers to interpret findings and discuss how they inform safety approaches, while also reading recent literature to stay current in this rapidly evolving field.
🚀 Application Tools
🎯 Who Anthropic Is Looking For
- Has deep expertise in mechanistic interpretability research, with demonstrated experience in techniques like circuit analysis, feature visualization, or activation patching on transformer-based language models
- Possesses strong engineering skills to build the 'microscopes' and tools needed for interpretability research, not just theoretical knowledge
- Is genuinely curious about how neural networks work at a fundamental level and shares Anthropic's safety-focused mission
- Can bridge research and engineering, implementing experiments and analyzing results to discover meaningful algorithms within model parameters
📝 Tips for Applying to Anthropic
Demonstrate specific mechanistic interpretability work in your portfolio - link to papers, blog posts, or GitHub repos showing circuit analysis, feature visualization, or similar work on language models
Reference Anthropic's specific interpretability work - mention Chris Olah's introduction, their blog posts, or the Hard Fork podcast discussion to show you've deeply engaged with their approach
Explain why you're specifically interested in Anthropic's safety-focused mission rather than just any AI research position
Highlight both your research capabilities AND engineering skills - this role requires building tools, not just theoretical work
Address the ethical considerations mentioned in their job posting - briefly explain why you've chosen to work on frontier AI despite potential concerns
✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter
["Your specific experience with mechanistic interpretability techniques and what you've discovered about how neural networks work", "Why Anthropic's safety-first mission resonates with you personally and professionally", "How your skills bridge research and engineering - examples of tools you've built or experiments you've implemented", 'Your thoughts on the challenges of making AI systems interpretable and trustworthy']
Generate Cover Letter →🔍 Research Before Applying
To stand out, make sure you've researched:
- → Read all of Anthropic's interpretability blog posts and papers to understand their specific research directions
- → Watch/listen to the Hard Fork podcast episode featuring Anthropic's interpretability work
- → Study Chris Olah's introduction to interpretability and be ready to discuss it
- → Research Anthropic's overall safety philosophy and how interpretability fits into their broader technical agenda
💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics
Based on this role, you may be asked about:
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Focusing only on high-level AI ethics without demonstrating concrete mechanistic interpretability skills
- Treating this as just another ML research role without addressing Anthropic's specific safety mission
- Having only theoretical knowledge without evidence of hands-on experimentation with neural network interpretability
📅 Application Timeline
This position is open until filled. However, we recommend applying as soon as possible as roles at mission-driven organizations tend to fill quickly.
Typical hiring timeline:
Application Review
1-2 weeks
Initial Screening
Phone call or written assessment
Interviews
1-2 rounds, usually virtual
Offer
Congratulations!