Manager Of Applied Ai Architecture, Startups

About the Role

Lead and grow a team of Applied AI Architects focused on driving adoption of Anthropic’s Claude Developer Platform among startups, personally engaging in high-priority pre-sales technical partnerships and defining playbooks for scalable LLM solutions. The role combines technical leadership, startup-facing pre-sales execution, and cross-functional influence to translate customer signals into product and engineering priorities.

Building AI dev tools and LLM-powered systems with the Claude API; hands-on LLM work and context/eval engineering for rapid prototyping and production.

Location: San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY

Salary: USD 315,000 - 380,000/year

Posted: Today

Category: GTM / Marketing / Sales / Customer / DevRel / Training

Vibe Markers: 🚀 Startup, 💻 Open Source, 🔥 Hot

Experience Level: Senior

Job Description

Role

As Manager of Startups Applied AI Architects, you will lead a team that helps startups build AI-native products using the Claude Developer Platform. You will set the vision and playbooks for technical partnership in the startup segment, personally lead strategic pre-sales engagements, and grow a high-performing team that operates at startup speed.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, develop, and grow a team of Startups Applied AI Architects, setting standards for technical credibility and customer impact.
• Drive team performance through goal-setting, coaching, and continuous technical development.
• Personally lead pre-sales technical engagements from discovery through deployment and expansion for high-priority startup accounts.
• Build and own technical playbooks: run technical evaluations, develop customer-specific evaluation frameworks, and architect LLM solutions for resource-constrained teams.
• Partner with Account Executives and GTM leadership to shape segment strategy and drive Claude API adoption.
• Surface insights on startup usage patterns, deployment choices, and emerging use cases and translate them into actionable feedback for Product and Engineering.
• Influence cross-functional stakeholders across Sales, Product, and Engineering to advance startup customer needs and roadmap priorities.
• Represent Anthropic in the startup ecosystem via events, workshops, and content.
• Keep the team current on AI engineering trends (context engineering, eval frameworks, agentic architectures, developer tooling).

Requirements

• 8+ years in technical customer-facing roles (e.g., Solutions Architect, Sales Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer) with 5+ years managing pre-sales or technical go-to-market teams.
• Proven track record building and developing high-performing technical customer-facing teams (hiring, coaching, onboarding).
• Deep experience working with startups or high-growth technology companies and understanding their technical decision processes.
• Demonstrated builder credibility: built and deployed LLM-powered applications and can earn trust of technical founders and engineers.
• Hands-on expertise with context engineering, LLM evaluation frameworks, and modern AI architectures; comfortable guiding prototypes to production-grade systems.
• Comfortable with Python and fluent in common LLM frameworks, tools, and integration patterns used in startup engineering stacks.
• Strong communication skills and customer-facing experience; energized by ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

Strong Plus Qualifications

• Experience as a technical founder or working in founder-led sales motions.
• Track record winning technical evaluations against other LLM providers.
• Experience building foundational team infrastructure: hiring frameworks, onboarding, playbooks, and coaching systems.
• Visible technical presence in the startup or AI engineering community (talks, writing, open-source).

Compensation

• Annual salary range: $315,000 — $380,000 USD (listed for this role).

Logistics

• Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education/training/experience.
• Location policy: location-based hybrid policy; staff expected to be in an office at least 25% of the time.
• Visa sponsorship: Anthropic states it does sponsor visas and provides immigration support in many cases.

Tech Stack

Claude Developer Platform, Claude API, Python, LLMs, LLM evaluation frameworks, Agentic architectures, Developer tooling, Context engineering

Skills

Technical Leadership, Team Management, Coaching, Pre-sales Engineering, Solutions Architecture, Customer-facing Engagement, Go-to-Market Strategy, Stakeholder Management, Cross-functional Collaboration, Product Feedback & Roadmap Influence, Startup Experience, Builder Mindset, Technical Evaluation, Architectural Design, Context Engineering, Evaluation Frameworks, Hiring & Onboarding, Communication, Presentation/Public Speaking, Strategic Planning

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and benefits
• Optional equity donation matching
• Generous vacation
• Parental leave
• Flexible working hours
• Office workspace in San Francisco
• Visa sponsorship / immigration support