Anthropic is offering salaries of up to £340k to top AI engineers in London, as it ramps up a European hiring spree following expansion in the region.
Competition for AI talent has intensified in Europe as startups compete against a crop of increasingly well-funded homegrown rivals alongside Big Tech players that’ve recently set up shop in the region.
US-based Anthropic, which is reportedly in talks to raise a $5bn round, announced it was planning on hiring more than 100 new recruits in Europe earlier this year.
A candidate for a research engineer on the reinforcement learning team can expect to take home £225k-340k, according to Anthropic’s website. A security engineer to monitor for threats to the company’s AI systems could make £255k-325k.
“We are starting to see the US AI talent arms race spread to London,” says Ellis Seder, founder of tech recruitment firm Santa Monica Talent, adding that UK-based startups and scaleups would struggle to compete with £340k salaries.
Founders, recruiters and investors tell Sifted that similar roles at European startups could be paid anywhere from £90k-200k — with VC-backed scaleups pushing towards the latter for senior AI jobs.
“We’re seeing the top end of the market for technical AI roles rising rapidly at the moment,” says Raymond Siems, founder at salary benchmarking platform Ravio. “This is led by extremely well-funded AI-first companies pushing compensation to new heights.”
AI talent war
Anthropic is one of many Big Tech giants increasing AI hiring in Europe, as US players look to tap a talent pool with world-leading researchers which can be acquired for a fraction of the cost of those in Silicon Valley.
OpenAI announced plans for a Munich office earlier this year — its fifth in the region since 2023, Google is opening a new 4,000-person office in London later this year and Microsoft is also planning a new AI hub in the UK capital.
They’re battling against homegrown startups which are continuing to raise record sums. AI-native tech companies in Europe have raised €4.4bn in funding so far this year, according to Sifted data, already topping the €3.9bn picked up across 2024.
But those figures pale in comparison to the funds available to big tech players in the US, and some of the continent’s buzziest AI startups told Sifted in March that there are more roles being created at tech companies in Europe than there are people to fill them.
That competition is seeing execs at execs at Europe’s AI darlings resort to more creative recruitment methods, including cosying up to researchers, upskilling employees and turning to AI agents to overcome the worker shortage.
Some early-stage startups are also paying close to £200k for top AI talent as they look to challenge for the best workers, says Siems.
In total Anthropic is hiring for eight AI engineer roles in London, all of which are offering salaries of at least £225k. Anthropic has been approached for comment.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/anthropic-salaries/
