Hardware Lab Manager

Responsibilities

• Run the physical lab across both sites, including receiving and staging, rack-and-stack, copper and fiber cabling, power distribution and load planning, cooling, and floor layout.
• Bring up new server and accelerator platforms from crate arrival to a machine that remote engineers can access, including firmware and BIOS/UEFI setup, out-of-band management, OS installation, network provisioning, and firmware updates.
• Own hardware procurement, including forecasting needs with partner teams, ordering equipment, managing quotes and lead times, and maintaining receiving and inventory processes.
• Own hardware RMA processes end to end: triage, swap, shipment, tracking, closure, and vendor escalations.
• Build one-off engineering setups such as JTAG/SWD/UART debug and programming harnesses, remote power switching, console and KVM access, and improvised hardware fixes.
• Oversee on-site smarthands and contractor work, including electricians, cabling crews, riggers, integrators, and OEM field engineers; scope work, dispatch resources, and validate quality.
• Manage physical access, asset auditing, and lifecycle tracking for expensive and pre-release hardware.
• Create playbooks and lightweight tooling for inventory, remote power, and console access so remote teams can use the lab independently.

Requirements

• Hands-on experience running a hardware, systems, or datacenter lab or similar physical compute environment.
• Experience with rack-and-stack, copper and fiber cabling, power distribution units, circuits, and phase balancing.
• Working knowledge of server management planes, including BMC, IPMI, Redfish, BIOS/UEFI configuration, serial consoles, PXE/network boot, and firmware updates.
• Sufficient Linux and networking knowledge to provision bare machines, including VLANs, DHCP, DNS, and basic switch configuration.
• Experience managing vendors, contractors, quotes, freight, and physical equipment procurement.
• Comfortable and safe using power tools, bench power supplies, and wiring or rack elevation diagrams.
• Ability to work independently with minimal supervision and communicate risks and blockers clearly.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience standing up a lab or datacenter room from an empty space, including layout, power and cooling budgets, and initial purchasing.
• Experience with high-density accelerator systems, GPU/TPU-class racks, liquid cooling, or pre-release/NPI hardware bring-up.
• Electronics bench skills, including soldering and rework, oscilloscopes, multimeters, custom cables, debug harnesses, JTAG probes, and light fabrication.
• Experience supporting hardware security, firmware, or platform bring-up work.
• Experience with DCIM or asset-management tools such as NetBox or ServiceNow.
• Experience purchasing hard-to-source or specialty hardware and managing related compliance and logistics.

Compensation and Benefits

• Annual salary range: $320,000–$405,000 USD.
• Minimum education: Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience.
• Visa sponsorship may be available.
• The role is based in the San Francisco office, with travel to nearby lab spaces required. Anthropic's hybrid policy generally expects staff to work from an office at least 25% of the time, though this role requires more frequent in-office work.