Staff+ Software Engineer, Databases
San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA
Posted 16d ago
About the job
We are seeking experienced engineers to build and scale the database infrastructure that powers Claude's products and Anthropic's research. As a Software Engineer on the Databases team, you will architect and operate systems that enable millions of users to interact with Claude, while also supporting frontier AI research workloads. You will help define Anthropic's database strategy by designing systems capable of handling billions of API requests, building storage solutions that operate seamlessly across GCP, AWS, and various deployment models, and creating a reliable data layer to accelerate research velocity. The team focuses on the core database platform, data movement, and caching infrastructure.
Responsibilities
- Drive the technical direction for database solutions across Product and Research.
- Design and implement scalable database solutions for millions of users.
- Build and scale database systems through significant growth while maintaining reliability and performance.
- Develop the database platform to enable engineers to ship without database or scaling concerns.
- Architect data storage solutions for multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
- Develop database infrastructure for diverse product and research workloads.
- Build data movement infrastructure for safe data consolidation and migration.
- Design and operate caching infrastructure for high-performance paths.
- Partner with teams to understand data requirements and build accelerating infrastructure.
- Optimize database performance, reliability, and cost efficiency.
- Make build-vs-buy decisions for database technologies.
Requirements
- Significant experience building and operating production database or storage systems.
- Deep knowledge of distributed database architectures and OLTP systems at scale.
- Proficiency with SQL and at least one major relational or distributed database engine (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, Spanner, CockroachDB, DynamoDB).
- Track record of leading large, complex infrastructure projects.
- Ability to balance rapid development with production system reliability.
- Strong technical leadership and cross-functional collaboration skills.
- 10+ years building and scaling database systems (preferred).
- 3+ years leading large-scale projects or teams (preferred).
- Experience scaling databases through rapid growth (preferred).
- Experience operating globally distributed SQL databases in production (preferred).
- Experience with Redis, Temporal, vector databases, or async job processing frameworks (preferred).
- Experience with change data capture, large-scale data migration, or streaming data infrastructure (preferred).
- Experience building multi-cloud or hybrid cloud database solutions (preferred).
- Knowledge of database orchestration and automation at scale (preferred).
- Contributions to database internals, storage engines, or related open source projects (preferred).
Benefits
- Annual compensation range: $320,000 - $485,000 USD
- Visa sponsorship available