# Policy Design Manager, Conventional Weapons

**Company:** [Anthropic](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/anthropic)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Washington, DC
**Role:** Product Operations
**Salary:** $245k – $285k/yr
**Skills:** Weapons Systems, Threat Modeling, Policy Development, Machine Learning, LLMs, Robotics, Autonomy, Guidance Navigation And Control, Signal Processing, Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Embedded Software, Itar, Ear, Classifier Evaluation
**Posted:** 2026-08-22

> Owns conventional weapons policy for AI safeguards, translating weapons-systems expertise into threat models, evaluations, guardrails, detection systems, and enforcement practices. The role requires deep applied weapons expertise, policy-writing ability, legal understanding, and cross-functional communication.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Own and maintain the conventional weapons policy, defining which activities models should and should not support.
- Build threat models and evaluations for model contributions to weapons development, including software and autonomy components.
- Partner with engineering to translate policy into model guardrails, detection systems, and enforcement tooling.
- Serve as the subject-matter expert for conventional weapons escalations and respond rapidly to emerging risks.
- Communicate policy reasoning to technical and non-technical audiences across product, engineering, legal, and leadership.
- Engage external experts, government, and industry partners to strengthen policy and enforcement.

## Requirements
- Deep, applied expertise in weapons systems and the ability to translate technical evidence into policy judgments.
- Experience in a service research laboratory, defense research or innovation agency, or weapons-system company.
- Ability to write clear, operationally precise policy and explain complex technical topics to non-specialists.
- Understanding of legal frameworks governing weapons and their transfer across jurisdictions.
- Ability to conduct rigorous open-source technical analysis of weapons systems.
- Comfort with ambiguity and preventing misuse without obstructing legitimate research and engineering.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.

## Nice-to-haves
- Understanding of machine learning and large language model fundamentals.
- Engineering experience in systems engineering, robotics and autonomy, guidance/navigation/control, sensors and signal processing, aerospace or mechanical engineering, materials and energetics, or embedded software.
- Experience with arms export controls such as ITAR/EAR or international arms-control regimes.
- Experience building or evaluating classifiers, including LLM-based classifiers, and analyzing precision and recall for rare, high-consequence categories.
- Trust & safety or product policy experience at a technology platform.

## Compensation and Benefits
- Annual salary range: **$245,000–$285,000 USD**.
- Competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and office collaboration space.
- Hybrid policy: staff are generally expected to work from an office at least 25% of the time; some roles may require more office time.
- Visa sponsorship may be available.

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