People Legal Counsel

Anthropic$335K — $385K *
Legal & Accounting
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • JD from an accredited law school; active membership in U.S. state bar (CA, NY, WA preferred)
  • 10+ years of experience in employment law, in-house and law firm
  • Proven experience building and managing scalable employment legal programs
  • Strong analytical, writing, and communication skills
  • Ability to navigate complex issues and provide actionable guidance
  • Demonstrated team-level ownership and project management capabilities
  • Collaborative mindset with a focus on mentoring and amplifying others' effectiveness

Responsibilities

  • Partner with Legal, People, and Finance on global M&A deals
  • Advise on compensation, benefits, performance management, and leaves of absence
  • Implement compliant employment programs aligned with company culture
  • Craft clear policies and communications for legal concepts
  • Proactively identify and mitigate legal risks
  • Coach and mentor partners and managers on employment law fluency
  • Manage relationships with outside counsel during litigation support

Benefits

  • Visa sponsorship available with reasonable efforts for successful candidates
  • Expect to work in the San Francisco office at least 3 days per week
  • Encouragement for diverse candidates to apply, promoting inclusion
  • Opportunity to collaborate with a fast-paced, high-performance team
  • Engagement in building ethical AI systems with social implications
Full Job Description
About the role

Anthropic is seeking an exceptional senior People Legal Counsel who will closely partner with our People team, business and technical stakeholders to build and manage employment programs that enable high performers to achieve their best work. This role will take team-level ownership beyond individual projects, efficiently solving complex legal problems with strategic direction from leadership, and will amplify others' impact through collaboration and mentorship. The ideal candidate pairs deep law firm and in-house experience at an international company, with the ability to develop scalable frameworks and processes, and collaborate effectively across technical and business teams in a fast-paced and fun environment.
Key responsibilities
  • Partner with Legal, People, and Finance teams on global M&A deals
  • Advise the People team and managers on a wide range of legal matters including compensation, benefits, performance management, leaves of absence, and co-employment issues
  • Implement and manage compliant employment programs to create a culture of high performance, and alignment to Anthropic's culture, values, and People philosophy
  • Craft clear and comprehensive written guidance, policies, playbooks, and communications that effectively translate complex international employment law concepts into actionable frameworks for technical and business stakeholders
  • Proactively identify and mitigate employment legal risks
  • Amplify the team: coach and mentor key partners, managers, and cross-functional stakeholders, building employment law fluency across the organization
  • Support on demands, charges, and litigation; liaise and manage relationships with outside counsel
  • Stay current on relevant employment laws, regulations, and industry trends, and proactively disseminate implications to key stakeholders
Minimum qualifications
  • Have a JD from an accredited law school and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar (California, New York, or Washington preferred)
  • Have demonstrated team-level ownership - you've independently owned a practice area or major workstream and built systems and frameworks others rely on
  • Are humble, thoughtful, exercise sound judgment, and operate at the highest level of integrity
  • Are strategic, flexible, resourceful, and solution-oriented - you anticipate problems and build for scale
  • Have strong organizational and project management skills, and can drive complex multi-stakeholder workstreams with minimal oversight
  • Have exceptional analytical, writing, and communication skills - you define strategy and translate complex legal issues into actionable guidance for non-lawyers and executives alike
  • Are a generous collaborator who amplifies others' effectiveness
  • Are curious, open, and willing to change your mind
  • Are comfortable in a fast-paced, high-volume, ambiguous environment
Preferred qualifications
  • Have at least 10 years of practicing employment law, with a combination of experience at a global-focused law firm and in-house
  • Experience advising on employment legal matters across multiple jurisdictions
  • Experience in a high-growth tech company or similarly fast-paced in-house environment
  • A track record of building employment legal programs or playbooks that scaled with company growth

Role-specific policy: For this role, we expect all staff to be able to work from our San Francisco office at least 3 days a week, though we encourage you to apply even if you might need some flexibility for an interim period of time.

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role's On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary:

$335,000-$385,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

About Anthropic

Anthropic is an artificial intelligence research lab that focuses on developing AI systems that are safe, reliable, and trustworthy. The company was founded in 2019 by Dr. Yoshua Bengio, a leading AI researcher and winner of the Turing Award. Anthropic's research is focused on developing AI systems that can learn from small amounts of data, reason about complex systems, and interact with humans in a natural way. The company is based in New York City and has a team of experienced AI researchers and engineers.
Learn more about Anthropic
Size
50 employees
Industry
Founded
2019

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