The AI era aims for a flatter and broader society Role of “Member of Technical Staff” You can land one of the most prestigious jobs in the technology industry.
Anthropic hired Peter Bailis as a member of its technical staff in March, less than a year after he joined Workday as chief technology officer. Gerrit Kazmaier, Workday’s president of products and technology, said at the time of the hire that Bailis would be part of the HR company’s commitment to being “all in” on AI.
Prior to joining Workday, Bailis served as a vice president at Google for about a year and a half, according to LinkedIn.
“We thank Peter for his contributions and wish him every success in his next chapter,” a Workday spokesperson said in a statement. “We are excited to have Gabe Monroy join Workday as Chief Technology Officer and lead the next chapter of AI innovation.”
An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed that Bailis has moved from Workday. Bailis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An Anthropic spokesperson said Bailis will work on reinforcement learning engineering at the startup.
The MTS designation is common at frontier labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as large companies that employ engineers in research and engineering fields. The title emphasizes the cross-functional and non-hierarchical structure. Although the label does not specify executive-level positions, it carries prestige and often promises new product development.
“Engineers here do a lot of research, and researchers do a lot of engineering,” Anthropic said on its careers page, adding that engineers “give as much input into the direction of Anthropic as anyone else.”
OpenAI president Greg Brockman similarly explained in 2023 that the AI startup didn’t intend to “bucket people into researchers and engineers” and chose the MTS title.
Mike Krieger was the co-founder and CTO of Instagram before launching the news aggregator app before joining Anthropic as chief product officer. Earlier this year, Krieger announced that he would be transitioning his role on X to a technical staff member at Anthropic’s Labs working on the Claude code.
MTS roles can also bring high pay.
In 2025, Business Insider reported that members of Anthropic’s technical staff could be paid between $300,000 and $405,000, citing H-1B visa applications with the Department of Labor. At OpenAI, salaries for each technical staff member could range from $210,000 to $530,000, according to the report.
Anthropic’s soaring valuation also offers the potential to create millionaires through equity as a startup eyeing a post-money valuation of $380 billion.
The potential appeal of MTS’ role in Frontier AI Labs emerges as AI-native startups disrupt large software companies.
In February, stocks in the software sector plummeted after Anthropic rolled out industry-specific plug-in tools with Claude Cowork. The reaction, dubbed “SaaSpocalypse,” reflects concerns that AI labs like Anthropic are developing tools so advanced that they make specialized software services companies unnecessary.