Software Engineer, Research Infrastructure

About this role

<div class="content-intro"><h2><strong>About Anthropic</strong></h2> <p>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.</p></div><h2><strong>About the role</strong></h2> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">Anthropic's Research Productivity organization builds the infrastructure and systems that accelerate research across Anthropic, including the tools that help our research process get faster and more effective over time. We're looking for an experienced software engineer to join us as we scale this infrastructure at a moment when both demand and scope are growing extremely quickly.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">This team operates like a startup within a startup. You'll be a strong fit if you like thinking from first principles, iterating fast on infrastructure, and tackling reliability and scalability challenges head-on as the products built on top of your systems evolve underneath you.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">You'll independently scope complex, multi-month projects, drive cross-org alignment through ambiguous problem spaces, and make the architectural decisions that shape how the infrastructure behind our research tooling gets built. You'll partner directly with research teams to understand their workflows, anticipate how their requirements will change, and design and scale infrastructure that can keep pace.</p> <h2><strong>Responsibilities</strong></h2> <ul> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Design, build, and scale infrastructure and systems that support rapidly increasing usage, where requirements and workload continue to evolve as the products built on top of them evolve</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Independently scope and lead complex, multi-month engineering projects, from an ambiguous starting point through to a production system</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Drive cross-organizational alignment on technical direction, working through ambiguous problem spaces with multiple stakeholders and teams</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Make architectural decisions that shape the foundation of research infrastructure and tooling across Anthropic</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Partner directly with researchers to deeply understand their workflows, then anticipate and design for how those needs will change</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Iterate quickly, favoring pragmatic, first-principles solutions and fast feedback loops over heavy upfront design</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Take ownership of the reliability and scalability of critical systems as load, usage, and complexity increase</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Help set technical standards and best practices for the team, and mentor other engineers</li> </ul> <h2><strong>Minimum Qualifications</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems or infrastructure in production</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">A track record of independently scoping and delivering complex, ambiguous, multi-month technical projects</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Strong software engineering fundamentals and hands-on coding ability</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Experience making architectural decisions that other engineers and teams build on top of</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience driving alignment across multiple teams or stakeholders</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-changing environments</li> </ul> <h2><strong>Strong candidates may also have</strong></h2> <ul> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Experience building infrastructure or platforms specifically for research or machine learning workflows</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Direct experience navigating the reliability and architectural challenges that come with rapidly scaling systems</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Experience with distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and infrastructure-as-code</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Familiarity with the compute, tooling, and workflow needs of large-scale machine learning research</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Experience…