People Legal Counsel, 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's People Legal team is looking for a Lead Employment Counsel to build the legal foundation for our growing workforce across Asia-Pacific. You'll partner closely with our People team and business leaders to design and run employment programs in the region that help our people do their best work. This role pairs deep employment law expertise with pragmatism and creativity. You'll build structures that manage legal risk across several APAC countries today and that will hold up as our presence in the region scales. You'll also help colleagues around the world understand how local requirements shape the way we hire, manage, and support people in APAC. Key responsibilities • Serve as the primary employment lawyer for Anthropic's APAC region, partnering with People and business leaders across People programs, policies and day-to-day issues • Build and maintain the legal infrastructure for new and existing APAC jurisdictions, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and India • Advise on market entry and workforce structuring, including acquisitions, employer of record arrangements, contractor classification, and headcount thresholds that trigger local obligations • Partner with Compensation, Benefits, and Equity teams so that global programs are compliant and scalable • Guide employee relations matters, including workplace investigations, in line with local law and practice • Develop and manage strategy on employment disputes across the region, from pre-litigation claims through tribunal and court proceedings, in partnership with outside counsel • Track legislative and regulatory developments across the region, including employee data privacy and emerging rules on AI in employment, and turn them into practical guidance • Develop scalable templates, playbooks, and training that enable stakeholders to operate compliantly Minimum qualifications • Hold a law degree (JD, LLB, or equivalent) and meet the local licensing requirements to work as in-house counsel where you'll be based • Have deep subject-matter expertise on employment law across multiple APAC countries • Write clearly and concisely, and can provide actionable guidance to non-lawyers • Balance legal risk with business practicality, and work collaboratively with legal and business cross-functional partners • Work effectively with colleagues and stakeholders across multiple time zones Preferred qualifications • At least 12+ years of relevant employment legal experience across law firms and in-house, with demonstrated experience supporting companies through rapid growth • Experience advising People and business teams on the practical application of employment laws in Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, and Singapore • Creative and pragmatic in your approach to developing legal solutions to business problems • Working knowledge of employee data privacy requirements across the region Role-specific policy: For this role, we expect all staff to be able to work from our Sydney 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. 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 physic