Anthony was HM Government Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security from 2015-2021. He is now President of City, University of London. His scientific work is in the broad area of software development tools and processes. Before being appointed to his government role, he was the Head of UCL Computer Science and then Dean of the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences. He also a Chair in Software Systems Engineering at UCL. He has served on the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, as a Member of Council of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and was a Founder Trustee of the Alan Turing Institute. He is active as an entrepreneur and is the founder of several start-ups.

Anthony is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng). He is also an elected Member of Academia Europaea and a Fellow of the City and Guilds of London Institute. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to computer science and engineering.