Regional State and Local Affairs Lead, Western States

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 role

We are looking for a Regional State and Local Affairs Lead to lead Anthropic's engagement with state and local governments across the Western United States, advancing AI policy, legislation, and regulation that supports Anthropic's mission of ensuring that artificial intelligence systems are developed safely and benefit humanity.

In this role, you will work closely with Anthropic's Head of State and Local Government Relations and coordinate with the broader government relations team to execute state policy campaigns in your region, build coalitions to advance policy outcomes, and manage engagement across state legislatures, governors' offices, attorneys general, state agencies, and local governments in Western states.

Successful candidates will demonstrate a track record of political strategy and execution—with specific examples of how you have contributed to complex policy campaigns, built relationships with key stakeholders, supported legislative and regulatory outcomes, and executed with accountability and focus in fast-paced environments.

Anthropic is equal parts research lab, policy think-tank, and technology startup. We care deeply about safe development of AI systems, and build partnership with governments through proactive, opinionated, substantive policy conversations. We recognize that our approach to AI policy is genuinely distinctive in the marketplace—grounded in honest assessment of technological trajectories and authentic concern for safe scaling—and we need a regional lead who can bring that positioning to life at the state and local level.

This role offers an opportunity to be part of building a high-impact state affairs operation at a critical moment for AI policy. You will be responsible for executing on strategic priorities in your region, developing relationships with key government stakeholders, and contributing to the broader state affairs function.

In this role, you will:

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Execute Anthropic's state affairs strategy across Western states, implementing policy campaigns and engagement plans developed in coordination with the Head of State Affairs

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Build and maintain relationships with state legislators, legislative staff, governors' offices, attorneys general, and state agency leaders across your assigned region

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Cultivate relationships with governors' offices and executive branch leadership to advance Anthropic's policy priorities in the region

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Develop and manage partnerships with external stakeholders including universities, industry partners, and advocacy organizations in Western states

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Track and report on state policy developments in your region, providing intelligence and analysis to inform company strategy

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Monitor and engage on legislative and regulatory developments across Western states, identifying opportunities and risks for Anthropic

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Manage relationships with key state and local stakeholders including elected officials, agency leadership, and external partners—with the primary objective of advancing Anthropic's policy priorities

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Represent Anthropic at regional events including conferences, summits, and government meetings

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Translate Anthropic's technical research and policy positions into actionable engagement strategies tailored to Western state political environments

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Coordinate with Anthropic's policy, communications, and executive teams to ensure regional activities align with company-wide positioning

You may be a good fit if you:

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Align with our mission and embrace the imperative of policy impact and change

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Have 10+ years of experience in state government affairs, political strategy, or legislative roles, with demonstrated success contributing to legislative and regulatory outcomes

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Have existing relationships with state leaders in Western states, including legislators, governors' offices, or attorneys general

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Have experience working on state government relations in California and additional Western states, with understanding of regional political dynamics

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Have a track record of executing on strategic objectives and delivering measurable outcomes in government affairs roles

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Understand how state legislatures and executive branches work—committee processes, legislative and regulatory procedures, and how to move policy forward

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Have experience engaging with governors' offices and attorneys general on policy matters

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Have experience building relationships with external stakeholders including universities, industry groups, and advocacy organizations

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Have exposure to technology policy or emerging technology regulation; you understand the unique challenges of navigating policy for rapidly evolving technologies

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Can manage multiple priorities and stakeholder relationships across different states and adapt to different political environments

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Demonstrate understanding of how to build coalitions and identify aligned constituencies to advance policy objectives

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Have ability to work under time pressure and manage competing demands in high-stakes environments

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Can translate complex technical topics into clear, accessible policy positions and talking points

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Have experience working with communications teams to develop effective messaging for policy campaigns

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Are drawn to working with an organization that approaches AI policy with intensity and intellectual honesty

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary:
$265,000—$295,000 USD

Logistics

Education requirements: We require at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.

How we're different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

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 in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process