Software Engineer, Research Infrastructure

Anthropic$405K — $500K+*
Enterprise Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems
  • Proven ability to manage and deliver complex, ambiguous engineering projects independently
  • Strong software engineering skills with hands-on coding experience
  • Experience making architectural choices that influence wider engineering teams
  • Excellent communication skills for cross-team alignment
  • Ability to thrive in fast-paced, changing environments

Responsibilities

  • Design and scale systems to handle growing usage and evolving requirements
  • Lead complex engineering projects from conception to production
  • Facilitate technical direction across teams, overcoming ambiguity
  • Make foundational architectural decisions for research infrastructure
  • Collaborate with researchers to anticipate and address workflow changes
  • Prioritize rapid iteration and practical solutions over extensive upfront design
  • Maintain system reliability and scalability as usage increases
  • Establish technical standards and mentor engineering peers

Benefits

  • Comprehensive support for relocation and visa sponsorship
  • Working in a startup-like culture emphasizing autonomy and rapid delivery
  • Opportunity to influence and shape foundational infrastructure tools
  • Collaboration with researchers on impactful AI projects
  • Access to ongoing training and mentorship opportunities
Full Job Description
About the role

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.

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.

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.
Responsibilities
  • 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
  • Independently scope and lead complex, multi-month engineering projects, from an ambiguous starting point through to a production system
  • Drive cross-organizational alignment on technical direction, working through ambiguous problem spaces with multiple stakeholders and teams
  • Make architectural decisions that shape the foundation of research infrastructure and tooling across Anthropic
  • Partner directly with researchers to deeply understand their workflows, then anticipate and design for how those needs will change
  • Iterate quickly, favoring pragmatic, first-principles solutions and fast feedback loops over heavy upfront design
  • Take ownership of the reliability and scalability of critical systems as load, usage, and complexity increase
  • Help set technical standards and best practices for the team, and mentor other engineers
Minimum Qualifications
  • Experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems or infrastructure in production
  • A track record of independently scoping and delivering complex, ambiguous, multi-month technical projects
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals and hands-on coding ability
  • Experience making architectural decisions that other engineers and teams build on top of
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience driving alignment across multiple teams or stakeholders
  • Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-changing environments
Strong candidates may also have
  • Experience building infrastructure or platforms specifically for research or machine learning workflows
  • Direct experience navigating the reliability and architectural challenges that come with rapidly scaling systems
  • Experience with distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and infrastructure-as-code
  • Familiarity with the compute, tooling, and workflow needs of large-scale machine learning research
  • Experience operating in a startup or startup-like environment, i.e. a small, fast-moving team with high autonomy
  • Prior experience as a technical lead or mentor for other engineers


The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role's On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary:

$405,000-$625,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from [redacted].com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links-visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.

About Anthropic

Anthropic is an artificial intelligence research lab that focuses on developing AI systems that are safe, reliable, and trustworthy. The company was founded in 2019 by Dr. Yoshua Bengio, a leading AI researcher and winner of the Turing Award. Anthropic's research is focused on developing AI systems that can learn from small amounts of data, reason about complex systems, and interact with humans in a natural way. The company is based in New York City and has a team of experienced AI researchers and engineers.
Learn more about Anthropic
Size
50 employees
Industry
Founded
2019

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