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Salary: USD 295,000 - 295,000 / annual
The Anthropic Institute seeks a Tabletop Exercise Lead to build and lead its tabletop exercise (TTX) program and team. You will set the research agenda for the Institute's exercises—determining which questions they should answer, which scenarios to run, which audiences to engage, and what each run tests. You will own the methodology that makes results comparable across runs and translate findings into actionable insights for external stakeholders.
Tabletop exercises serve dual purposes: they allow decision-makers to practice responding to high-stakes scenarios before they occur, and they function as a rigorous research method. By running the same scenario multiple times with different groups and AI agents, you can map the distribution of decisions people make under uncertainty—generating empirical evidence about how people and institutions will respond to situations that haven't happened yet.
Key responsibilities include:
- Setting the program's research agenda: defining questions, scenarios, and audiences
- Designing exercises as empirical studies with standardized scenarios and comparable data capture
- Building measurement infrastructure: pre/post assessments, decision logs, transcript analysis, and after-action reports
- Publishing findings and briefing senior leaders inside and outside Anthropic on gaps exposed by exercises
- Hiring, managing, and developing a team and bench of facilitators
- Creating scalable, reusable scenario libraries refreshed on regular cadence
- Building a facilitator kit ("TTX in a box") for internal teams and external partners
- Creating and directing tools behind exercises, including Claude-driven simulations that generate live outside-world feeds during play
The role is based in San Francisco with a hybrid policy requiring at least 25% in-office time, though some roles may require more.
QUALIFICATIONS:
Minimum:
- Designed and run tabletop exercises, wargames, or simulations for senior decision-makers and published on the subject
- Training in a discipline using simulation, experimental methods, or structured analysis
- 10+ years of experience in national security, government, technology policy, or strategy
- Strong grasp of AI capabilities and safety research to keep scenarios technically grounded
- Managed a team, including hiring, setting direction, giving feedback, and developing people
- Extensive use of Claude and other AI tools in your own work
- Commitment to AI safety and Anthropic's public benefit mission
Preferred:
- Published research on wargaming methods, simulation, or crisis decision-making
- Experience running exercises that fed into real policy or crisis-response decisions
- Multi-iteration or experimental wargames with cross-run analysis
- Used AI agents or language models as players, adjudicators, or analysts in simulations
- Led a research program or team through growth
- Existing relationships and trust across national security, government, policy, and AI communities
- Published widely read work on AI, emerging technology, strategy, or crisis decision-making
