Anthropic· Engineering & Design - Product· San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA
Staff+ Software Engineer, Backend
Classified Tasks (25)
Automate 0%Augment 60%Human-Only 40%
Augment (15)
AI assists, human decides
1. Own backend systems that power user experiences across the API, Claude Code, and Claude.ai
technical
7. Maintain hands-on involvement with code and models
technical
8. Build and scale the foundation of the Claude API and its core serving systems
technical
9. Own the performance, reliability, and efficiency of the core serving path
technical
11. Bring frontier model capabilities to developers through the Claude API
technical
12. Own and develop core features such as vision, tool use, and computer use
technical
13. Launch new models and ship primitives that enhance Claude's capabilities
technical
15. Transform Claude into a knowledge worker by ensuring the model has access to and understanding of relevant knowledge at the right time
technical
16. Enable developers to securely give Claude access to their data while automatically processing and retrieving relevant information
technical
18. Build products and tools to enable developers to harness the full power of large language models
technical
19. Build tools to accelerate developers from idea to deployment
technical
20. Improve developer usage of the API by leveraging Claude to generate and evaluate prompts
technical
22. Build infrastructure and APIs that enable developers to create agentic applications
technical
23. Help developers with agent orchestration through tool use, multi-step reasoning, and long-running task execution
communication
24. Enable Claude to take actions and accomplish complex goals on behalf of users
technical
Human-Only (10)
Requires human judgment
2. Scope complex, multi-month projects through ambiguous problem spaces
leadership
3. Lead peers through technical and product decisions
leadership
4. Drive alignment with product, peer engineering teams, and research to identify capability gaps and translate model improvements into shipped products
leadership
5. Make architectural decisions that affect the reliability and scalability of systems serving hundreds of thousands of global users
technical
6. Design processes that help the team operate effectively and prevent repeated failures
operational
10. Partner closely with inference and safeguards teams to optimize the full stack
communication
14. Partner with research and inference to productionize new model capabilities
communication
17. Partner with research to bring state-of-the-art retrieval advancements to developers
communication
21. Collaborate with other teams to bring Claude's current and future capabilities to developers
communication
25. Partner with research to bring cutting-edge agent capabilities to production
communication
Job description
About Anthropic Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems. About the Role: Anthropic is looking for experienced, product-minded engineers to own the backend systems that power user experiences across our API, Claude Code, and Claude.ai. You'll independently scope complex, multi-month projects through ambiguous problem spaces and lead peers through technical and product decisions; you'll drive alignment with product, peer engineering teams, and research to identify capability gaps and translate frontier model improvements into shipped products. You'll make architectural decisions that affect the reliability and scalability of systems serving hundreds of thousands of global users (including internal teams), and design processes that help your team operate effectively and never fail the same way twice - all while staying hands-on with the code and our models. We have multiple teams that are currently hiring. Team placement occurs after the interview process, taking into account your interests and experience alongside organizational needs. This flexible approach allows us to match talented engineers with the backend product efforts where they'll have the greatest impact and growth potential: API Core : You'll build and scale the foundation of the Claude API—the systems that deliver Claude's intelligence to every developer, from startups to enterprise. You'll own the performance, reliability, and efficiency of our core serving path, ensuring users get the most speed and value from our models. You'll partner closely with inference and safeguards to optimize the full stack. API Capabilities: You'll bring frontier model capabilities to developers through the Claude API, owning core features like vision, tool use, and computer use. You'll launch new models and ship the primitives that make Claude more capable with every release. You'll partner directly with research and inference to productionize what's next. API Knowledge: You'll focus on transforming Claude into a true knowledge worker by ensuring the model has access to and understanding of the right knowledge at the right time. You'll work on making it possible for developers to securely give Claude access to their data while automatically processing and retrieving relevant information. You'll partner directly with research to bring state-of-the-art retrieval advancements to developers. Developer Experience: You’ll focus on building products and tools to enable developers to harness the full power of LLMs to create successful, reliable, and groundbreaking applications with ease. You’ll build the tools to accelerate developers from idea to deployment. You'll help figure out how to leverage Claude to improve developer's usage of the API, such as generating and evaluating prompts while collaborating closely with the teams above to bring Claude's current and future capabilities to developers. API Agents: You'll focus on building the infrastructure and APIs that enable developers to create powerful agentic applications within the Claude API. You'll help developers with agent orchestration through capabilities like tool use, multi-step reasoning, and long-running task execution that allow Claude to take actions and accomplish complex goals on behalf of users. You'll partner with research to bring cutting-edge agent capabilities to production. Enterprise Foundations: We're looking for a software engineer to join our Enterprise Foundations team—the team t