Peter Bailis, who was appointed Chief Technology Officer at enterprise software giant Workday in March 2024, has left the company to join artificial intelligence lab Anthropic as a Member of Technical Staff. A Workday spokesperson confirmed his departure, stating the company is "grateful for Peter's contributions."
An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed Bailis's move and said he will be working on reinforcement learning engineering at the startup. His departure comes less than a year after he joined Workday, where President of Product and Technology Gerrit Kazmaier had said Bailis would be part of the company's initiative to go "all in" on AI.
The Prestige of the 'Member of Technical Staff' Title
The "Member of Technical Staff" (MTS) title is common at frontier AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI, highlighting a cross-functional and non-hierarchical structure. While the label does not specify an executive-level position, it carries significant prestige and often comes with the promise of building new products.
Anthropic states on its careers page that "engineers here do lots of research, and researchers do lots of engineering," adding that engineers will "have as much input into Anthropic's direction as anyone else." OpenAI president Greg Brockman similarly explained in 2023 that the startup did not want to "bucket people into researchers and engineers," opting for the MTS title instead.
High-Profile Moves and High-Paying Roles
Bailis's career move follows a pattern of senior tech executives transitioning to technical roles at AI labs. Mike Krieger, the cofounder and former CTO of Instagram, joined Anthropic as its chief product officer before announcing earlier this year he was shifting to a technical staff member role within Anthropic's Labs division, which works on Claude Code.
The MTS role can also command high compensation. In 2025, Business Insider reported, citing H-1B visa filings, that a member of technical staff at Anthropic can earn between $300,000 and $405,000. At OpenAI, the same title could pay between $210,000 and $530,000.
AI Startups Disrupting the Software Sector
The allure of roles at frontier AI labs comes as AI-native startups are seen as disruptive forces to larger, established software companies. In February, Anthropic's rollout of Claude Cowork and industry-specific plugin tools triggered a stock sell-off in the software sector, an event dubbed the "SaaSpocalypse."
This reflected market fears that AI labs like Anthropic are developing tools advanced enough to make companies dedicated to specific software services redundant. Workday has named Gabe Monroy as its new Chief Technology Officer to lead its "next chapter of AI innovation."