Manager of Applied AI Architecture, Startups

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: how to run technical evaluations, develop customer-specific eval frameworks, architect LLM solutions for resource-constrained early-stage teams, and win against competitive alternatives
• Partner with aligned Account Executives and GTM leadership to shape segment strategy and drive Claude API adoption across the startup ecosystem
• Ensure your team consistently surfaces insights on how startups are building with Claude — emerging use cases, deployment patterns, architectural decisions — 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 — context engineering, eval frameworks, agentic architectures, developer tooling — and ensure your team is operating at the frontier

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in technical customer-facing roles (Solutions Architect, Sales Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, or similar), with 5+ years leading and managing pre-sales or technical go-to-market teams
• Strong track record of building and developing high-performing SA teams — hiring well, coaching effectively, and creating an environment where technical talent grows
• Deep experience working with startups or high-growth technology companies — understanding the velocity, constraints, and culture of early-stage companies
• Genuine builder credibility: built and deployed LLM-powered applications, speak the language of founders and founding engineers
• Hands-on expertise with context engineering, LLM evaluation frameworks, and modern AI architectures
• Comfortable with Python and fluent in the LLM frameworks, tools, and integration patterns common in startup engineering stacks
• Energized by building in ambiguous environments — defining the playbook, thriving in fast-moving contexts where technology and customer segment are evolving rapidly
• Genuine passion for making powerful technology safe and societally beneficial

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience as a technical founder or in a founder-led sales motion
• Track record of winning competitive technical evaluations against other LLM providers
• Experience building foundational team infrastructure from the ground up: hiring frameworks, onboarding programs, technical playbooks, and coaching systems in a high-growth environment
• Deep familiarity with how developer infrastructure procurement evolves from seed through Series B and beyond
• Visible technical presence in the startup or AI engineering community through conference talks, written content, or open-source contributions

Compensation & Benefits

• Annual Salary: $315,000 — $380,000 USD (OTE includes base + commissions/bonuses)