Staff+ Software Engineer, Backend
San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA
Posted 10d ago
About the job
Anthropic is seeking experienced, product-minded backend engineers to lead the development of systems powering user experiences across their API, Claude Code, and Claude.ai. In this role, you will independently scope complex, multi-month projects, guide technical and product decisions, and drive alignment with product, engineering, and research teams. You will make critical architectural decisions impacting the reliability and scalability of systems serving hundreds of thousands of users, and design processes to enhance team effectiveness. You will remain hands-on with code and models, contributing directly to Anthropic's mission of creating reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
Responsibilities
- Own and scale backend systems for API, Claude Code, and Claude.ai.
- Independently scope complex, multi-month projects through ambiguous problem spaces.
- Lead peers through technical and product decisions.
- Drive alignment with product, peer engineering teams, and research to identify capability gaps.
- Translate frontier model improvements into shipped products.
- Make architectural decisions affecting system reliability and scalability.
- Design processes to help the team operate effectively and prevent recurring failures.
- Build and scale the foundation of the Claude API, focusing on performance, reliability, and efficiency.
- Bring frontier model capabilities (e.g., vision, tool use) to developers via the Claude API.
- Launch new models and ship primitives that enhance Claude's capabilities.
- Transform Claude into a knowledge worker by ensuring access to and understanding of relevant knowledge.
- Enable developers to securely provide Claude access to their data and process relevant information.
- Build products and tools for developers to harness LLMs for application development.
- Build tools to accelerate developer workflows from idea to deployment.
- Build infrastructure and APIs for developers to create agentic applications within the Claude API.
- Enable agent orchestration through capabilities like tool use, multi-step reasoning, and long-running task execution.
- Build foundational systems for enterprise readiness at scale, including user/permissions management, security/compliance, and analytics infrastructure.
- Build the identity and verification product layer for safe model launches and expanded capabilities.
- Create systems for KYC/KYB, trust grant issuance/inheritance, and end-user verification.
- Build the platform connecting Claude-powered enterprise tools through technology partnerships.
- Create infrastructure for partner onboarding, customer storefronts, and transaction/entitlement flows.
Requirements
- Experienced, product-minded engineers.
- Ability to independently scope complex, multi-month projects.
- Ability to lead peers through technical and product decisions.
- Ability to drive alignment with product, peer engineering teams, and research.
- Ability to make architectural decisions affecting system reliability and scalability.
- Ability to design processes for team effectiveness.
- Hands-on coding and model interaction skills.
- Experience with backend systems powering user experiences.
- Experience with API development and scaling.
- Experience with LLM capabilities like vision, tool use, and computer use.
- Experience with retrieval advancements.
- Experience building developer tools and products.
- Experience with agentic application development infrastructure and APIs.
- Experience with agent orchestration, multi-step reasoning, and long-running task execution.
- Experience building enterprise-ready AI systems.
- Experience with user and permissions management, security, compliance, and analytics infrastructure.
- Experience with identity and verification product layers.
- Experience with KYC/KYB, trust grant issuance/inheritance, and end-user verification systems.
- Experience building platforms for enterprise tools, technology partnerships, and customer relationships.
- Experience with partner onboarding, customer storefronts, and transaction/entitlement flows.