Workday's Chief Technology Officer swapped his executive position for a technical staff role at Anthropic.

      In summary: Peter Bailis, who became the chief technology officer at Workday in May 2025, departed the company last month to join Anthropic as a member of the technical staff, focusing on reinforcement learning engineering. This change involves relinquishing a C-suite title in favor of a position that offers closer engagement with cutting-edge technology, landing Bailis at a company that is actively developing HR software similar to that of Workday.

      An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed his hire, which was reported by Business Insider. Bailis's profile has been removed from Workday's leadership page, and his LinkedIn now reflects this career shift. Before his tenure at Workday, he was the vice president of engineering at Google Cloud, where he oversaw AI initiatives related to data, including Conversational Analytics, NL2SQL, and retrieval-augmented generation for structured data. He also founded and managed Sisu Data, a decision intelligence firm, and served as an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University, where he co-led the DAWN project focused on data-intensive applications. His research in data systems combined with his recent experience in enterprise AI at Google Cloud creates a unique profile for a reinforcement learning role, indicating Anthropic’s interest in merging model training with applied product development.

      Transitioning from an executive role to an individual contributor role, Bailis has accepted the title of member of technical staff (MTS) at Anthropic, a standard engineering designation at both Anthropic and OpenAI, which applies to research and engineering roles across all levels of seniority. OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, has publicly described this structure, emphasizing the intention to avoid categorizing employees strictly as researchers or engineers; instead, the MTS title represents a flat technical hierarchy rather than a demotion. In practice, this title encompasses a wide range of seniority and salary: Anthropic’s MTS base salaries range from approximately $300,000 to $405,000, while at OpenAI, it ranges from about $210,000 to $530,000, with equity grants pushing total compensation for senior positions into seven figures.

      For Bailis, the trade-off is clear. A CTO role at a company the size of Workday, which generates around $8 billion in annual revenue and employs 18,000 people, holds a level of institutional authority that an individual contributor role at an advanced AI lab does not offer. However, it does afford direct access to the models being developed, training decisions, and research agendas without the organizational management layers that separate a CTO from the work itself. Anthropic, reporting a revenue run rate exceeding $30 billion and having over 1,000 enterprise clients each spending more than $1 million annually, has transitioned from merely a research lab to a serious commercial enterprise, providing a compelling reason for a technically ambitious leader to engage with the challenging engineering questions it now faces.

      Bailis's role at Anthropic will involve reinforcement learning engineering, a significant aspect of the company's model alignment and RL-based training techniques for agent behavior and tool usage. His extensive background in the enterprise software domain, especially as it relates to Anthropic's current direction as a product-focused company rather than just an API provider, positions him well. Specifically, The Information noted that Bailis’s joining aligns with Anthropic's initiative to develop HR applications. The company has already introduced Claude plugins for HR functions, such as generating job descriptions, onboarding documents, and offer letters. Bailis's recent experiences in enterprise HR and finance software, first at Google Cloud and then at Workday, are now being leveraged towards Anthropic’s enterprise product development.

      The competitive irony is notable. Workday's CEO, Carl Eschenbach, publicly stated in February 2026 that Anthropic, along with Google and OpenAI, uses Workday’s software internally. The firm that acquired licenses from Workday has now engaged its former CTO to create products that will vie for the same enterprise HR budgets.

      Bailis's hiring fits into Anthropic’s aggressive strategy for building enterprise distribution infrastructure recently. In early March, Anthropic launched a marketplace for Claude-powered enterprise software, enabling companies with paid API commitments to buy third-party applications built on Claude, while forgoing the typical revenue cuts charged by cloud hyperscalers. Initial launch partners included Snowflake, legal AI company Harvey, and developer platform Replit.

      Shortly after, Anthropic pledged $100 million to establish a new Claude Partner Network, involving Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant, and Infosys, formalizing consulting relationships aimed at accelerating Claude deployments in major enterprises. The company plans to expand this commitment in following years and is increasing its partner-facing workforce by fivefold. Additionally, Anthropic has engaged in discussions for a joint venture with private equity firms, including Blackstone, to integrate Claude across their portfolio companies in exchange for approximately $200 million of its own funding.

      Currently, enterprise customers account for about 80% of Anthropic’s revenue, and the