Staff+ Backend Software Engineer

Join Anthropic, a leading AI safety and research company, as a Staff+ Backend Software Engineer. In this role, you will independently scope complex projects, make architectural decisions, and drive alignment with product and research teams. You will have the opportunity to work on various teams, including API Core, API Capabilities, API Knowledge, Developer Experience, API Agents, and Enterprise Foundations. You will also receive comprehensive benefits, including health insurance, paid parental leave, flexible paid time off, and a competitive salary and equity package.

Build and scale the foundation of the Claude API, ensuring users get the most speed and value from our models.

Care deeply about investing in the mentorship and growth of your peers

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

About Anthropic

• Anthropic is looking for experienced, product-minded engineers to own the backend systems that power user experiences across our API, Claude Code, and
• Thrive in fast-paced environments and can navigate ambiguity to find the highest-leverage path forward
• Served as a technical lead or architect on a product or API platform, owning both the technical vision and execution end-to-end

Responsibilities

• Independently scope complex, multi-month projects and lead peers through technical and product decisions.
• Make architectural decisions that affect the reliability and scalability of systems serving hundreds of thousands of global users.
• Have strong coding fundamentals and are comfortable working across backend systems, APIs, and integrations — and can reach into the frontend when needed to ship an effective solution
• Have led the design and delivery of large-scale backend systems in production that power high-adoption B2B or consumer facing products
• Are skilled at driving alignment across technical and non-technical teams; you communicate clearly, influence technical decisions beyond your immediate team, and help others ramp effectively on your systems

Requirements

• Have experience with distributed systems, API design, and cloud infrastructure at scale
• Take a product-focused approach to your work work and care about building solutions that are robust, scalable, and easy to use
• Have 8+ years of relevant experience as a backend or product engineer, with a track record of leading complex, multi-month projects or teams as a tech lead or equivalent
• Experience designing and scaling APIs with a focus on developer experience, consistency, and reliability — including API design review processes
• Deep experience building enterprise SaaS platforms, including permissions infrastructure, billing and pricing systems, or compliance frameworks for regulated industries (SO2, HIPAA)
• Background in a specific industry vertical — financial services, healthcare, or legal technology — with a track record of building products that handle sensitive, domain-specific data
• Experience building agentic systems, orchestration frameworks, or developer tools — including CLI tools, IDE integrations, or AI-assisted coding environments
• Experience designing operational processes (incident response, on-call rotations, postmortem review) for production systems serving large-scale developer or enterprise audiences
• Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
• Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
• Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
• Experience partnering with ML/AI research teams to productize model capabilities or identify and address model failure modes in production
• Experience building products where adoption and activation are core challenges — instrumenting funnels, diagnosing drop-off, and shipping the product changes that close gaps

Pay

USD 405,000 - 485,000