Research Scientist, Life Sciences (Computational Chemistry)

The role

You will build reinforcement learning environments, datasets, and evaluations to teach Claude chemistry. You will work alongside bench chemists and AI researchers to turn chemistry problems and experimental data into training tasks.

What you will do

• Design and build reinforcement learning environments for chemistry end to end
• Design and source new experimental datasets, environments, and evaluations
• Develop evaluations that measure model performance on real chemistry tasks
• Run and analyze training experiments with AI research teams
• Ensure datasets and environments are high quality and well documented
• Communicate findings clearly to chemistry, AI research, and life sciences audiences

Required qualifications

• PhD in chemistry, computational chemistry, or a related field
• Deep knowledge of organic and medicinal chemistry, including reactions, synthesis, and SAR
• Strong Python skills
• Solid machine learning fundamentals
• Hands-on experience training and evaluating models
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and defining problems in a rapidly evolving research environment
• Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively across cross-functional teams
• Strong written and verbal communication skills

Nice to have

• Experience with reinforcement learning, large language models, or building evaluations and benchmarks
• Track record of supporting drug discovery programs alongside medicinal and synthetic chemists
• Experience curating chemistry datasets from the literature, patents, or lab notebooks
• Cheminformatics and molecular modeling skills, for example RDKit, docking, free energy calculations, or quantum chemistry
• Hands-on synthetic or medicinal chemistry experience at the bench
• Publications, patents, or open-source software demonstrating scientific impact

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and benefits
• Optional equity donation matching
• Generous vacation and parental leave
• Flexible working hours
• Lovely office space

Before you apply

• We do sponsor visas, but we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate
• We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records or criminal histories

About the company

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. Their mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.