Technical Program Manager, Hardware Systems
Anthropic is hiring a Technical Program Manager, Hardware Systems in San Francisco and New York, United States. It pays $365k-$435k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Anthropic.
Level's read on this job
- Little AI ●○○○ is how Level rates this role: aI is not part of the work.
- The posting mentions visa sponsorship.
- The posting mentions AI safety, AI research and hardware systems among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Anthropic has 680 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Own execution of custom AI hardware systems from concept through production deployment at Anthropic.
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
Anthropic trains and serves frontier AI models on some of the largest accelerator fleets in the world, and we're now building the custom hardware systems that fleet will run on — from the package boundary out through boards, racks, interconnect, power, cooling, and the datacenter interface.
We're looking for a Technical Program Manager to own execution of these hardware systems from concept through production deployment. You'll drive the program that turns architecture and specs into boards and racks that ship — managing ODMs, CMs, and component vendors on one side, and coordinating silicon, firmware, infrastructure software, supply chain, and datacenter teams on the other.
This is a role on a new hardware team. You'll build the program cadence, review structure, and NPI process this team runs on. We need someone who has shipped hardware at scale, has a realistic view of ODM/CM schedules and where they break, and is comfortable owning consequential program calls without a large organization behind them.
Key responsibilities
- Own the integrated hardware systems program plan across board, chassis, rack, and interconnect — from requirements through EVT/DVT/PVT, qualification, and production ramp — and be the source of truth on schedule, risk, and readiness.
- Drive execution with ODMs, contract manufacturers, and component/optics vendors: SOWs, build schedules, deliverable tracking, factory readiness, and escalation when they slip.
- Stand up and run the NPI cadence — build matrix, engineering reviews, DFx, issue triage, exit criteria — and keep it lightweight enough that a small, senior team actually uses it.
- Drive the bring-up and validation program for new platforms: lab and pilot-rack logistics, firmware/BMC/diagnostics coordination, test coverage, and the reliability and telemetry targets a platform has to hit before it enters the fleet.
- Own the interfaces that make or break a hardware program: silicon (samples, package, power/thermal envelopes), datacenter (power, cooling, rack integration, deployment windows), infrastructure software (management plane, provisioning, telemetry), and supply chain (long-lead components, second-sourcing, allocation).
- Run partner and technology evaluations as a program — candidate ODMs, reference platforms, connector/optics/memory options — and land build / buy / co-design recommendations with the architecture team.
- Own program communication upward and outward — for an audience that ranges from architects to executives.
- Develop and share AI-assisted approaches to hardware program management — issue-tracker synthesis, build-readiness checking, spec/BOM consistency, ODM-report digestion.
Minimum qualifications
- 8+ years in hardware systems / NPI program management for compute, networking, storage, or accelerator platforms.
- Direct ownership of at least one platform from concept through volume production — you can walk through its EVT/DVT/PVT arc, what broke, and how you recovered.
- Working technical fluency across the hardware stack — power delivery, thermal, mechanical, high-speed interconnect, board design, system management — sufficient to interrogate status and push back credibly on architects and vendors.
- Experience managing ODMs/CMs and component vendors, including SOW negotiation, build tracking, quality escapes, and escalation.
- Track record of standing up program mechanisms on a new or early-stage hardware effort, not just operating inside a mature PLC.
- Strong written communication — plans, reviews, and exec updates that many teams depend on.
- Comfort operating with high autonomy and limited process in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience with AI/ML accelerator systems (GPU, TPU, custom ASIC), HPC, or hyperscale datacenter platforms and their scale-up / scale-out fabrics.
- Experience taking a first-generation, custom-silicon-based system from bring-up through fleet deployment.
- Experience with liquid-cooled and/or high-density rack architectures, rack level high power distribution, or optical interconnect programs.
- Familiarity with the chip-package-system interface and coordinating tightly with a silicon team.
- Experience with datacenter integration, deployment, and fleet-scale reliability/RAS programs.
- Practical experience using AI tools in your own workflow, and clear ideas about where they help and where they don't.
- BS/MS in EE, CE, ME, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
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:$365,000—$435,000 USDLogistics
Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
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.
How we rate this
Technical Program Manager, Hardware Systems at Anthropic rates 20 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- How do you think about the risk of an AI system in this kind of role failing silently?
- Tell me about a research question you investigated. What did you find?
- Tell me about a project where hardware systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where npi was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where program management was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI Safety, AI Research, Hardware Systems, Npi, and Program Management. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
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