Corporate Counsel, M&A
San Francisco, CAFull-TimeMid-levelLegal
About Anthropic
- Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.
About the Role
- We are seeking an experienced Corporate Counsel with deep expertise in mergers and acquisitions to join our growing legal team. As Anthropic continues to scale rapidly, we need a skilled M&A attorney who can lead complex transactions—including acquisitions, divestitures, strategic investments, and joint ventures—from initial due diligence through execution and post-closing integration.
- The ideal candidate will have significant experience at a nationally recognized law firm and/or in-house at a high-growth technology company, with a track record of managing both domestic and cross-border transactions. You will work closely with our Corporate Development, Finance, and executive teams to execute strategic transactions that support Anthropic's mission and growth objectives. Beyond M&A, you will also contribute to general corporate matters including securities compliance and corporate governance.
Responsibilities
- Lead all aspects of M&A transactions, including acquisitions, divestitures, minority investments, and other strategic transactions, from due diligence through closing and post-closing integration
- Draft, review, and negotiate transaction documents including letters of intent, term sheets, purchase agreements, ancillary agreements, and related closing documentation
- Manage and coordinate due diligence processes, including oversight of cross-functional workstreams and third-party advisors
- Provide strategic counsel on deal structuring, risk allocation, purchase price mechanisms, representations and warranties, indemnification, and other key transaction terms
- Prepare materials for and present to the Board of Directors and executive leadership on transaction matters
- Manage outside counsel relationships, including staffing, budgets, and work product quality on complex transactions
- Represent the Legal Department on post-closing integration matters, working cross-functionally to ensure smooth transitions
- Develop and maintain standardized processes, playbooks, and template documents to drive efficiency and best practices across M&A transactions
- Support general corporate matters as needed, including public company reporting, securities law compliance, equity compensation administration, and corporate governance
You may be a good fit if you have
- A JD from an accredited law school and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar
- At least 10-12 years of M&A legal experience at a nationally recognized law firm and/or in-house at a high-growth technology company
- A deep understanding of M&A transaction structures, including stock purchases, asset purchases, mergers, minority investments, and joint ventures
- Experience with both domestic and cross-border transactions
- A well-versed in technology companies and startups, with an understanding of the unique legal issues they present
- Are humble, thoughtful, exercise sound judgment, and operate at the highest level of integrity
- Exceptional analytical, drafting, negotiation, and communication skills, with the ability to translate complex legal issues into clear, practical advice
- The ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and can manage multiple transactions and priorities simultaneously
- Strong business acumen and can provide solutions-oriented legal advice that supports company growth objectives
- The independence and capabilities of a self-starter who can drive projects forward with minimal supervision
- A strong capability to collaborate cross-functionally, and can effectively partner with and influence internal and external stakeholders at all levels
Strong candidates may have
- In-house M&A experience at a technology company
- Experience with public company securities law compliance and SEC reporting
- Experience with equity compensation administration
- Experience with AI, machine learning, or other emerging technology companies
- Strong presentation skills with the ability to translate legal jargon into plain language for business stakeholders
Role-specific policy: For this role, we expect 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.
How we're different
- We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.
- The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.
