Staff+ Software Engineer, Databases

USD 320,000-485,000 per year
SENIOR
✅ Hybrid
✅ Visa Sponsorship

Used Tools & Technologies

Not specified

Required Skills & Competences

MySQL @ 4 Redis @ 4 GCP @ 4 Leadership @ 7 AWS @ 4 Communication @ 4 PostgreSQL @ 4 API @ 4 Technical Leadership @ 7 Experimentation @ 4 AI @ 4

Details

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

We're looking for experienced engineers to build and scale the database infrastructure that powers both Claude's product offerings and Anthropic's research initiatives. As a Software Engineer on the Databases team, you will architect and operate database systems that both enable millions of users to interact with Claude and support cutting-edge AI research.

This role involves developing database strategy for Anthropic, designing systems that handle billions of API requests, creating storage solutions that work across GCP, AWS, and diverse deployment models, and building a reliable data layer that accelerates research experimentation.

Responsibilities

  • Drive the technical direction for database solutions used across Product and Research
  • Design and implement database solutions that scale to support millions of users across Claude's product ecosystem
  • Build and scale database systems through 100x+ growth while maintaining reliability and performance
  • Architect data storage solutions that work seamlessly across GCP, AWS, first-party deployments, third-party deployments, and other environments
  • Develop database infrastructure that serves both product and research workloads with different performance characteristics
  • Partner with product and research teams to understand data requirements and build infrastructure that accelerates innovation
  • Optimize database performance, reliability, and cost efficiency at massive scale
  • Make critical build vs. buy decisions for database technologies

Requirements

  • 10+ years of experience in a Software Engineer role building and scaling database systems (not including internships or co-ops)
  • 3+ years of experience leading large scale, complex projects or teams as an engineer or tech lead (not including internships or co-ops)
  • Deep expertise in distributed database architectures and OLTP systems at scale
  • Demonstrated experience successfully scaling databases through massive growth at high-growth companies
  • Ability to balance the speed of a startup environment with production reliability needs
  • Strong technical leadership and cross-functional collaboration skills

Technologies & Familiarity Mentioned

  • PostgreSQL, MySQL, DynamoDB
  • Redis, Temporal, vector databases, async job processing frameworks
  • Multi-cloud / hybrid cloud database solutions (GCP, AWS)
  • Database orchestration and automation at scale

Logistics

  • Locations: San Francisco, CA; New York City, NY; Seattle, WA
  • Location-based hybrid policy: currently expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time
  • Education: at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience
  • Visa sponsorship: Anthropic states they do sponsor visas and retain an immigration lawyer to assist where possible

Compensation

  • Annual Salary: $320,000 - $485,000 USD

How we're different

Anthropic works as a single cohesive team on a few large-scale research efforts and values impact, collaboration, and communication. We view AI research as an empirical science and host frequent research discussions to pursue high-impact work.

Benefits (selected)

  • Competitive compensation and benefits
  • Optional equity donation matching
  • Generous vacation and parental leave
  • Flexible working hours and collaborative office spaces

Other notes

  • Deadline to apply: none (applications reviewed on a rolling basis)
  • Candidates are encouraged to apply even if they do not meet every qualification listed.