Contracts Manager, APAC

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 Anthropic is seeking a Contracts Manager to join our team in Sydney, Australia as one of the founding members of our Commercial Legal team in the region. Embedded within our in-region commercial and legal operations, you'll work closely with local in-region counsel and lead counsel to support commercial and technology transactions across the region. We'll rely on you to help review, draft, and negotiate commercial and procurement contracts that support our cutting-edge AI systems. You'll also serve as a key partner in translating global legal strategy into regional execution, including supporting the triage of regional matters, rolling out process improvements and initiatives driven from global headquarters, and running local enablement sessions to keep business teams informed and aligned. As one of our first commercial legal hires in Australia, you'll help establish how we build and scale the contracting function across ANZ and the wider APAC region, building scalable processes and collaborating across Product, Sales, Finance, Business Operations, Research, and Procurement teams. Key responsibilities • Draft, analyse, negotiate, and complete complex commercial transactions with our enterprise customers, vendors, and strategic partners, including IP licensing agreements • Propose and develop scalable solutions to improve contracting efficiency • Collaborate with business units and legal team members to streamline contract management processes, identify potential risks, and drive continuous improvement in contract handling efficiency • Work cross-functionally with the Product, Sales, Business Operations, Research, and Procurement teams to achieve key business objectives and deliver strategic, business-minded and creative solutions • Partner closely with in-region counsel and lead counsel on day-to-day triage of regional legal matters, ensuring workload is prioritised effectively and seamlessly coordinated between regional and global teams • Drive the regional rollout of process improvements, policy updates, and programmes initiated from global headquarters, including planning and facilitating local enablement sessions to keep commercial and cross-functional stakeholders informed and ready to execute • Pitch in across other areas of the legal function. As a small team supporting big things, each of us practises across multiple areas, and we'd love to hear where else your experience or interests could contribute Minimum qualifications • Substantive knowledge of software and SaaS agreements, reseller agreements, services agreements, strategic partnerships, and general commercial contract terms • Ability to independently draft, review, and negotiate complex commercial and procurement contracts • Experience managing the full contract lifecycle for technology transactions, sales organisations, and/or partnerships Preferred qualifications • At least 8+ years of related contract management experience, with at least 5 years supporting technology transactions, sales organisations, and/or partnerships • Experience operating in a fast-paced technology startup where priorities shift rapidly and timelines often compress unexpectedly • Prior experience as part of a global or distributed legal team, including partnering with colleagues across regions and navigating the nuances of aligning local needs with centralised priorities • A track record of operating with a high degree of autonomy while keeping global stakeholders appropriately informed, comfortable setting your own cadence and exercising sound judgment about when to escalate versus when to decide • Experience with contract lifecycle management platforms (e.g., Ironclad) for contract drafting, workflow automation, and reporting • Strong habits around async communication, proactive status updates, and operating effectively with a remote manager across time zones • An understanding of what's important in the context of a contract and the organisation's mission, including when to be flexible and when to draw a hard line • A knack for identifying and implementing efficient processes and policies • A preference for straightforward, concise explanations over legalese and overwrought drafting • Comfort operating outside your areas of expertise and in uncharted legal territory • The ability to thrive as a member of cross-functional teams building frontier technologies, with a desire to develop a deep understanding of our technical teams and what we are building • Excellent verbal and written communication, analytical, collaboration, and interpersonal skills • Authentic integrity and a deep understanding of the importance of ethics in business 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. Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings. 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. Come work with us! Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.