Staff+ Software Engineer, Distributed Systems

About the role

We are looking for software engineers to build safety and oversight mechanisms for Anthropic’s AI systems. The role focuses on designing distributed, scalable systems that detect unwanted model behaviours and prevent disallowed use, upholding our principles of safety, transparency, and oversight.

Key responsibilities

• Scope and lead complex multi‑month infrastructure projects from ambiguous start to production.
• Develop monitoring systems to detect unwanted behaviours from API partners and enable automated enforcement or analyst review.
• Deploy and operate those monitoring systems across multiple clouds, including partner environments with data‑residency constraints, using shared pipelines, smoke tests, observability and alerting.
• Design and harden sandboxed runtimes for AI agents, providing isolation, network egress controls, least‑privilege data access, audit logging and insider‑risk safeguards.
• Manage cost and capacity for large volumes of long‑running agent work and meet service‑level objectives.
• Partner with monitoring‑agent engineers, security, privacy and legal teams to ship detection work quickly on a trusted platform.

Required profile

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or equivalent experience.
• Proficiency in Python, distributed systems design, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Experience building provider‑agnostic infrastructure across multiple cloud providers.
• History of operating large‑scale distributed platforms such as data platforms, control planes, or job schedulers.
• Hands‑on experience with sandboxing or isolation technologies (containers, microVMs, network policies) or a systems language like Rust.
• Strong communication skills for explaining complex technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders.

Required skills

• Python
• Distributed systems
• Infrastructure as Code
• Multi‑cloud (provider‑agnostic) infrastructure
• Large‑scale distributed platform engineering
• Sandboxing and isolation (containers, microVMs, network policies)
• Rust (or other systems language)

What we offer

• Annual salary range $320,000 – $485,000 USD.
• Competitive compensation and benefits package.
• Optional equity donation matching.
• Generous vacation and parental leave.
• Flexible working hours and hybrid office policy.
• Modern office space for collaboration.