Manager of Applied AI Architecture, Startups
$315k - $380k • San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY
Posted 1d ago
About the job
As a Manager of Startups Applied AI Architects at Anthropic, you will drive the adoption of frontier AI by leading a team of technical architects to help startups build AI-native products with the Claude Developer Platform. Your team will earn the trust of founders and engineers by supporting their technical ambitions from early product to scale. You'll bring your own builder credibility and startup instincts to the role, setting the vision for technical partnership in the startup segment, developing a high-performing team, and personally managing relationships with Anthropic's most strategic early-stage accounts. This role is for a proven technical go-to-market leader who knows how to build teams that move at startup speed, earn the trust of deeply technical buyers, and turn early engagements into lasting technical partnerships. You will define playbooks for nurturing and scaling new customers, set the bar for technical excellence, and grow your people, while staying close enough to the ground to know what's working.
Responsibilities
- Lead, develop, and grow a team of Startups Applied AI Architects, setting a high bar for technical credibility, customer impact, and startup-paced execution.
- Drive team performance through clear goal-setting, regular coaching, and a culture of continuous technical development.
- Personally lead pre-sales engagements with high-priority startup accounts, from initial technical discovery through deployment and expansion.
- Build and own the segment's technical playbooks for running technical evaluations, developing customer-specific eval frameworks, architecting LLM solutions, and winning against competitive alternatives.
- Partner with Account Executives and GTM leadership to shape segment strategy and drive Claude API adoption across the startup ecosystem.
- Surface insights on how startups are building with Claude and translate that signal into actionable feedback for Product and Engineering.
- Drive cross-functional influence across Sales, Product, and Engineering to advance startup customer needs and shape roadmap priorities.
- Build Anthropic's technical presence and credibility in the startup ecosystem through events, conferences, workshops, and content.
- Stay ahead of the AI engineering landscape, including context engineering, eval frameworks, agentic architectures, and developer tooling.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in technical customer-facing roles (Solutions Architect, Sales Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, or similar).
- 5+ years leading and managing pre-sales or technical go-to-market teams.
- Strong track record of building and developing high-performing SA teams.
- Deep experience working with startups or high-growth technology companies.
- Genuine builder credibility: experience building and deploying LLM-powered applications.
- Hands-on expertise with context engineering, LLM evaluation frameworks, and modern AI architectures.
- Comfortable with Python and fluent in LLM frameworks, tools, and integration patterns.
- Ability to thrive in ambiguous environments and define playbooks.
- Passion for making powerful technology safe and societally beneficial.