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
As a Transaction Principal for Japan at Anthropic, you'll drive the commercial sourcing and transaction execution process for our Japanese data center capacity deals. You'll lead RFP processes, negotiate term sheets, and serve as the central leader ensuring seamless stakeholder alignment from initial sourcing through lease execution.
This role is critical to securing the infrastructure that powers Anthropic's frontier AI systems in Japan — you'll bridge commercial negotiations with complex internal coordination across legal, finance, engineering, and network teams, and partner closely with our Compute Markets and Policy teams who own the Japan market strategy and government relationships. This is not an established leasing org; you'll be building process alongside execution in a market with unique regulatory, permitting, and power infrastructure dynamics.
Japan presents a distinctive data center landscape: tight land availability in key metros, evolving grid infrastructure, significant government interest in domestic AI infrastructure, and a business culture that places high value on relationship-driven deal-making and long-term developer partnerships. You'll need to navigate these market-specific realities while executing at the pace Anthropic requires.
Responsibilities
Lead the RFP and commercial sourcing process for Japanese data center deals, managing developer outreach, proposal evaluation, and competitive selection across the country of Japan
Drive the market to deliver on timeframes faster than the market provides through creative delivery models, smart regional selection, etc.
Negotiate term sheets and manage the LOI process, structuring commercial terms that meet Anthropic's technical and business requirements while maintaining strong developer partnerships — including navigating Japan-specific contractual norms and negotiation styles
Create the bridge from LOI to executed transaction, ensuring all commercial, technical, and legal requirements are satisfied for deal closure
Serve as project manager for cross-functional stakeholder engagement — coordinating due diligence teams, internal and external legal counsel, network organization, platform engineers, and finance to ensure alignment prior to lease execution
Act as the single point of contact for auxiliary organizations including networks, deployments, and government relations, providing regular updates on transaction progress and leasing status
Develop and maintain transaction timelines, tracking critical-path items and proactively identifying risks that could impact deal closure
Ensure all stakeholder requirements are captured and addressed in commercial agreements, translating technical and operational needs into contractual terms
Manage complex digital infrastructure development activities to a construction-ready state, through a developer or directly
Marry the right projects, capital stacks, and developers at the right stages — including understanding the role of Japanese developers, REITs, trading companies, and sogo shosha in data center financing and development
Navigate Japan-specific permitting, grid connection, and regulatory requirements — including coordination with utilities and relevant government ministries on infrastructure approvals
Document and refine transaction processes and playbooks to enable scalable deal execution as Anthropic expands its infrastructure footprint in Japan
Partner with the Compute Markets and Policy Managers to prioritize markets, sites, and counterparties, and feed deal learnings back into Japan market strategy
You may be a good fit if you
Have 10+ years of experience in transaction management, commercial real estate, data center leasing, or infrastructure procurement in Japan
Possess a proven track record of managing complex, multi-stakeholder transactions from sourcing through execution
Have strong negotiation skills with experience structuring term sheets, LOIs, and commercial agreements
Excel at project management and can coordinate across legal, technical, finance, and operational teams simultaneously
Have experience with RFP processes and competitive sourcing for large-scale infrastructure or real estate transactions
Have experience working in or across Japanese markets, with knowledge of the local data center and real estate development landscape
Are comfortable navigating Japanese business culture, including consensus-building (nemawashi), formal stakeholder alignment processes, and relationship-driven deal dynamics
Can operate effectively in fast-paced, ambiguous environments where processes are being built alongside execution
Are highly organized with strong attention to detail while maintaining focus on strategic deal objectives
Demonstrate exceptional communication skills and can coordinate effectively across time zones with US-based HQ teams and Japanese developer and government partners
It's a bonus if you
Have experience with data center or hyperscale infrastructure transactions specifically in Japan or broader APAC
Come from the development side of the industry rather than traditional brokerage/leasing — you understand how DC development works and how value is created (yield-on-cost, cap rates, development fees)
Understand technical requirements for AI/ML workloads including power density, cooling, and network connectivity
Have worked with legal teams on complex lease negotiations or infrastructure agreements under Japanese law
Understand utility coordination, power procurement, or energy considerations in the Japanese context — including grid constraints, utility interconnection processes, and renewable energy procurement (FIT/FIP schemes, corporate PPAs)
Have familiarity with Japanese government initiatives around domestic AI and digital infrastructure (e.g., METI's data center promotion policies, the government's semiconductor and digital strategy)
Have relationships within the Japanese data center developer, operator, and broker ecosystem — including domestic players and international operators with Japan presence
Are proficient in Japanese (business level or above) — not required, but a meaningful advantage for stakeholder engagement and developer relationships
Have a background in corporate development, strategic partnerships, or infrastructure investment
Have experience in high-growth technology companies managing infrastructure expansion in Japan or APAC
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.
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.
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.