Staff+ Software Engineer (Databases)

TL;DR

Staff+ Software Engineer (Databases): Architecting and scaling high-performance database infrastructure to support Claude's product ecosystem and frontier AI research with an accent on distributed systems, multi-cloud reliability, and data movement. Focus on designing systems that handle billions of requests, optimizing database performance at scale, and building a robust data layer that enables rapid research iteration.

Location: Must be based in or able to work from San Francisco, CA, New York City, NY, or Seattle, WA (Hybrid: 25%+ in-office required)

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

Company

Anthropic is an AI safety and research company dedicated to building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

What you will do

• Drive the technical direction for database solutions across product and research teams.
• Design and implement scalable database systems capable of supporting millions of users.
• Architect data storage solutions that operate seamlessly across GCP, AWS, and hybrid environments.
• Build data movement infrastructure including migration tooling, backfill, and change data capture pipelines.
• Develop and operate caching infrastructure to ensure high performance on critical paths.
• Optimize database performance, reliability, and cost efficiency as the platform scales.

Requirements

• Significant experience building and operating production database or storage systems.
• Deep knowledge of distributed database architectures and OLTP systems at scale.
• Proficiency with SQL and at least one major relational or distributed database engine.
• Track record of leading large, complex infrastructure projects as an engineer or tech lead.
• Ability to balance rapid development with the reliability needs of production systems.
• Strong technical leadership and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Nice to have

• 10+ years of experience building and scaling database systems.
• Experience operating globally distributed SQL databases like Spanner, CockroachDB, or TiDB.
• Experience with Redis, Temporal, vector databases, or streaming data infrastructure.
• Experience building multi-cloud or hybrid cloud database solutions.
• Contributions to database internals or related open source projects.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive compensation with equity donation matching.
• Generous vacation and parental leave policies.
• Flexible working hours to support work-life balance.
• Collaborative research-driven environment with frequent technical discussions.
• Visa sponsorship support provided for qualified candidates.