Staff+ Software Engineer, Privacy

Details

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems that are safe and beneficial for users and society. The privacy engineering team builds world-class privacy into Anthropic's AI systems. This role is a seasoned individual contributor position focused on architecting and implementing privacy-preserving systems across AI training, inference, and data infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement privacy-preserving architectures for AI training and inference systems handling billions of conversations, leveraging differential privacy, federated learning, and secure multi-party computation
• Partner with AI researchers to implement privacy-preserving training methodologies that maintain model quality while protecting user data
• Build foundational privacy infrastructure including automated data discovery, classification, access controls, audit logging, and lifecycle management systems
• Translate complex regulatory requirements (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, EU AI Act) into actionable technical implementations and automated compliance controls
• Architect comprehensive data governance platforms for tracking data lineage, purpose limitation, and retention across distributed AI systems
• Lead technical privacy reviews and threat modeling for new AI models and features, identifying risks and architecting scalable mitigations
• Collaborate with product and infrastructure teams to embed privacy controls into Claude's inference systems, user interfaces, and data pipelines
• Develop privacy engineering toolkits and frameworks that enable engineers to build privacy-preserving features by default
• Design and implement privacy-preserving analytics and measurement systems that provide insights while protecting individual user privacy
• Research and evaluate emerging privacy technologies from academia and industry, contributing to open-source tools and AI privacy standards
• Act as consultant and advocate for privacy best practices across the organization

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience (excluding internships/co-ops)
• 5+ years of experience focused on privacy, security, or data protection
• Deep expertise in privacy engineering principles: privacy by design, data minimization, purpose limitation
• Strong programming skills in Python, Go, or similar languages with experience building production systems at scale
• Experience with privacy-enhancing technologies (differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, secure enclaves)
• Experience with federated learning and secure multi-party computation
• Proven track record of designing and implementing privacy infrastructure serving millions of users
• Expertise in data governance, classification, and lifecycle management systems
• Strong understanding of privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) and ability to translate legal requirements into technical solutions
• Experience conducting privacy reviews, threat modeling, and risk assessments
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Compensation

• Annual Salary: $405,000 - $485,000 USD

Logistics

• Locations: San Francisco, CA; New York City, NY; Seattle, WA
• Location-based hybrid policy: staff are expected to be in one of Anthropic's 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 (subject to role and candidate)
• Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis (no deadline)

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and benefits
• Optional equity donation matching
• Generous vacation and parental leave
• Flexible working hours and a pleasant office space

How we work

Anthropic emphasizes collaborative, large-scale AI research aligned with AI safety and steerability goals. Communication and cross-team partnership (research, product, infrastructure, legal) are important aspects of the role.