Performance Engineer, Inference Systems
Anthropic · San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA · AI Research & Engineering · listed May 20, 2026
The shape of it
Seniority
Not stated
Where
Hybrid
Stated pay
$350,000 – $850,000 USD
Requirements listed
5
Length
1,270 words
In the posting’s own words
You'll work across all four areas. One week that might mean tracing a tail-latency regression from request timing down through routing and batching into a kernel overhead; the next it might mean tightening a correctness eval so it catches an output regression introduced by a quantization change. We're looking for performance engineers who treat correctness as part of performance.
What it asks for · 5
- Hands-on performance engineering experience: profiling, roofline analysis, latency/throughput optimization, and root-cause investigation in complex production systems
- Proficiency in Python, with the ability to read, instrument, and contribute to large production codebases you didn’t write
- Solid data analysis skills (e.g. SQL, pandas, or similar) sufficient to turn raw telemetry into clear findings
- Ability to communicate quantitative results clearly in writing to influence priorities on teams you don't manage
- Genuine interest in correctness as an engineering discipline: numerics, evaluation design, regression detection
Also a plus
- Experience with ML systems, especially training or inference infrastructure or general LLM serving stacks. Direct large-scale inference experience is a strong plus
- Familiarity with GPU/TPU/accelerator performance concepts (memory bandwidth, kernel overheads, quantization, collective communication). Reasoning about these matters more than having written kernels yourself
- Experience with reliability engineering for high-throughput services: autoscaling, load balancing, request routing, tail latency
- Experience with model evaluation or numerical regression-detection pipelines
- Experience building observability or telemetry for distributed systems
- Comfortable having impact through influence and evidence rather than direct ownership
What the job covers
- Run cross-layer performance investigations across throughput, latency, and reliability, sizing the gap between actual fleet performance and theoretical rooflines, identifying root causes, and quantifying the value of closing them
- Own and improve the correctness evaluation pipeline that validates model output quality across hardware platforms, numerics, and serving configurations, and lead the investigation when it catches a regression
- Build the observability, dashboards, and modeling tools that make throughput, latency, cost, reliability, correctness, and their interactions legible across the stack
- Partner with kernel, serving, routing, autoscaling, and capacity teams to prioritize and land the highest-impact optimizations your analysis surfaces
- Ruthlessly stack-rank a large surface area of opportunities by impact and effort, and say no to the ones that don't make the cut
Tools and skills named
Models & research
- Inference4×
- GPU
- LLM
- Machine learning
Cloud & infra
- Observability2×
- Distributed systems
Languages
- Python
- SQL
Data
- Pandas
Words the posting leans on
- correctness8×
- kernel7×
- performance7×
- experience6×
- latency6×
- model5×
- regression5×
- systems5×
- fleet4×
- gap4×
- inference4×
- investigation4×
- reliability4×
- routing4×
- serving4×
- analysis3×
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.
The posting, your resume, and the gaps between them. One click loads all three.
More open at Anthropic
- Account Executive, AI NativeNew York City, NY; San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY
- Account Executive - DNBSingapore
- Account Executive, Public SectorSydney, Australia
- Account Executive - Public Sector (ASEAN)Singapore
- Account Executive, StartupsSan Francisco, CA | New York City, NY
- Accounting, Revenue Internal ControlsSan Francisco, CA | Seattle, WA