Kristen Swanson leads Anthropic Education Labs hiring push

Anthropic is recruiting an education researcher and design engineer for a team focused on how people build capability with AI.

Kristen Swanson has announced she will lead Education Labs at Anthropic. Image: Kristen Swanson

Kristen Swanson has announced she will lead Education Labs at Anthropic, as the AI company recruits for two roles focused on AI fluency, learning research and product experiments linked to Claude.

Swanson announced the move on LinkedIn, where she said the Education Labs team is exploring how people can learn AI “in ways that build fluency alongside agency.”

The team is hiring an education researcher and a design engineer, with both roles listed in San Francisco and New York City. Anthropic says staff are currently expected to work from one of its offices at least 25 percent of the time.

The annual salary range for each role is listed as $300,000 to $405,000. Anthropic says it can sponsor visas, although not for every role or candidate.

The hiring push gives Anthropic’s education work a clearer product and research structure at a time when AI companies are trying to define what effective AI use looks like beyond access to tools.

Education Labs focuses on capability, not engagement

Anthropic describes Education Labs as a team studying how people learn and build capability with AI, with an emphasis on tools that make users more capable over time.

The design engineer role sits between research, product building and interaction design. Anthropic says the successful candidate will be the second technical builder on a small team studying how AI changes human capability and shipping features based on that research.

The job listing is unusually direct about what the team does not want to optimize for. Anthropic says Education Labs is “skeptical of tutorials, onboarding flows, and engagement metrics,” and is instead interested in experiences that make users “progressively more capable, curious, and empowered over time.”

The design engineer will be expected to build end-to-end prototypes, shape technical direction, work across product, design and research, and translate research findings on skill development and human-AI collaboration into shipped product.

Research role will build measures for AI learning

The education researcher role is described as the team’s first dedicated education research post.

Anthropic says the researcher will design and run mixed-methods studies on how people develop real skill with AI, with success measured by capability growth rather than engagement. The role includes building and validating instruments, measures and evaluation methods for AI fluency.

The researcher will also work with engineers, designers and researchers to translate findings into product experiments, curriculum and model-level improvements.

Anthropic is seeking candidates with backgrounds in learning sciences, education, cognitive science, human-computer interaction, educational psychology or related fields. The listing also names Python, data analysis and experience working with large language models as relevant technical skills.

The company says the role is not a standalone academic post, but a hands-on research role embedded in a small team that builds and ships.

Swanson brings research, design and learning background

Swanson joined Anthropic as a Member of Technical Staff in December 2025. Her background spans research, design, customer insight and user education roles across Okta and Slack.

At Okta, Swanson held senior roles including Senior Vice President of Design & Research, Vice President of Design & Research and Vice President of Research. She previously spent more than seven years at Slack, where her roles included Vice President of Customer Insights, Senior Director of Customer Insights, Customer Experience Chief of Staff and Director of Learning and User Education.

Swanson was also Founder and Chair of the Edcamp Foundation Board from 2010 to 2017 and is a board member of Develop for Good.

Swanson said in her LinkedIn post that applying through the listed roles is “the best way to be considered,” adding that she is not able to reply to every message about the vacancies.

Applications for the education researcher and design engineer roles are open through Anthropic’s careers pages. Both roles are tied to Education Labs’ work on AI fluency, capability-building and learning tools connected to Claude.