Research Operations Lead, Biology

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

Anthropic's Life Sciences team is building a world-class research group focused on making fundamental biological discoveries. The team combines cutting-edge AI with hands-on biological research, positioning Anthropic at the forefront of AI-accelerated scientific discovery.

About the role

We are hiring a Research Operations Lead to be the operational backbone of our team: the person who makes sure scientists can walk in every morning and get straight to science. You'll take on the operational systems we've started — procurement, inventory, safety, equipment, space — make them better, and scale them as the lab and its needs grow. We're hiring for trajectory as much as for what you've already done: the scope of this role will grow with the size of the team, and we want someone who's excited by that. This role is a rare opportunity to build the operational foundation of Anthropic's biology team and to grow with it. The systems you put in place will shape how a frontier AI company does experimental biology for years to come. If you're energized by high-ownership operational work in the service of ambitious science, we'd love to hear from you.

Key responsibilities

- Own day-to-day operations end to end: ordering and inventory, equipment scheduling and upkeep, consumables, shipping and receiving, and general space organization

- Build on and extend the operational systems a growing group needs: procurement workflows, inventory and sample tracking, equipment maintenance and calibration schedules, onboarding and training, SOPs

- Manage facilities and space: coordinate buildouts, moves, and equipment installs; act as the primary interface to building management, contractors, and Anthropic's central Workplace and IT teams

- Own the operating budget: track spend against plan, run the capital equipment purchasing process, and partner with Finance on forecasting and reporting

- Manage vendor and supplier relationships: including contract research organizations: source and qualify vendors, negotiate quotes and service contracts, schedule preventive maintenance and field-service visits, and hold suppliers to their commitments

Minimum qualifications

- Have managed the day-to-day operations of a life sciences lab — equipment, inventory, ordering, safety, space, and scheduling

- Have hands-on procurement and vendor management experience: sourcing suppliers, negotiating quotes and service contracts, and coordinating field-service and maintenance technicians

- Have tracked and managed an operating budget: purchase orders, invoices, spend-vs-plan, and capital requests

Preferred qualifications

- Are the person everyone in your group already comes to when something is broken, missing, late, or unclear — and you like being that person

- Enjoy engaging with scientists on the science itself — you want to understand what's happening at the bench well enough to anticipate needs

- Are results-oriented and practical and pick up slack even when it goes outside your job description

- Enjoy a role that stretches from the hands-on to the strategic, and are comfortable when priorities shift quickly and feedback is direct

- Lab operations or lab management experience in a biotech, pharma, diagnostics, or life-sciences startup environment, including exposure to how those organizations build new functions and processes end to end

- A degree in the life sciences and prior research experience at the bench

- People-management experience: hiring, onboarding, and supervising operations or facilities staff

- Experience supporting a team through significant growth in headcount, footprin