Staff+ Software Engineer, Infrastructure (Distributed Systems)

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

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 @anthropic.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.

What it asks for · 6

• 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
• Experience making architectural decisions that other engineers and teams build on top of
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and proficiency in at least one programming language (for example, Python, Rust, Go, or Java)
• Experience with modern cloud infrastructure, including Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code, on AWS and/or GCP
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience driving alignment across multiple teams or stakeholders

Also a plus

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, not including internships
• Experience with machine learning infrastructure, such as GPUs, TPUs, or Trainium, and associated networking infrastructure like NCCL
• Low-level systems experience, such as Linux kernel tuning or eBPF
• Background in security or privacy engineering best practices
• Prior experience as a technical lead or mentor for other engineers

What the job covers

• Independently scope and lead complex, multi-month infrastructure projects, from an ambiguous starting point through to a production system
• Make architectural decisions that shape the foundation of infrastructure other engineers and teams build on
• Drive alignment on technical direction across multiple teams, working through ambiguous problem spaces
• Partner with research and product teams to understand their infrastructure and compute needs, and translate them into technical designs
• Take ownership of the reliability, scalability, and security of the systems you build as usage and complexity grow
• Set technical strategy and standards for your team's infrastructure
• Build and improve operational processes, such as incident response, postmortems, and on-call rotations, that help the team learn from every incident
• Mentor other engineers and help raise the technical bar for the team

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• infrastructure11×
• experience9×
• build7×
• engineers6×
• systems6×
• technical6×
• ambiguous3×
• architectural decisions3×
• alignment2×
• complex multi-month2×
• distributed systems2×
• every2×
• incident2×
• independently scope2×
• infrastructure projects2×
• kubernetes2×

Counted from the posting after the mission statement and the legal notices are set aside. The ones near the top are the ones a screener is looking for.

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