Staff Software Engineer Databases

About Anthropic

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 is a unique opportunity to tackle database challenges at unprecedented scale. You'll develop the database strategy for Anthropic, design systems that handle billions of API requests, create storage solutions that work seamlessly across GCP, AWS, and diverse deployment models, and build the 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

You Might Be a Good Fit If You

• Have 10+ years (not including internships or co-ops) of experience in a Software Engineer role, building and scaling database systems
• Have 3+ years (not including internships or co-ops) of experience leading large scale, complex projects or teams as an engineer or tech lead
• Possess deep expertise in distributed database architectures and OLTP systems at scale
• Have successfully scaled databases through massive growth at high-growth companies
• Can balance the speed of a startup environment with the reliability needs of production systems
• Excel at technical leadership and cross-functional collaboration
• Are passionate about building the data layer that enables next-generation AI capabilities

Strong Candidates May Also Have

• Deep expertise scaling PostgreSQL, MySQL, DynamoDB, or similar database systems
• Experience with Redis, Temporal, vector databases, or async job processing frameworks
• Experience building multi-cloud or hybrid cloud database solutions
• Knowledge of database orchestration and automation at scale
• Background at companies known for database excellence

Note: Prior AI/ML infrastructure experience is not required. We value deep infrastructure/databases expertise from any domain.

Logistics

• Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
• Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
• Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
• Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.
• Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

Key skills/competency

• Staff Software Engineer Databases
• Database Infrastructure
• Distributed Database Architectures
• OLTP Systems
• Database Scaling
• Cloud Database Solutions (GCP, AWS)
• Database Performance Optimization
• Technical Leadership
• Cross-functional Collaboration
• AI Infrastructure