Staff+ Software Engineer, Platform Intelligence
Anthropic
Listing collected from Anthropic's career site. NextChapter is independent of Anthropic.
San Francisco, CA · $405k–$485k a year · Posted November 4, 2026
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Where San Francisco, CA ranks
Where San Francisco, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for security jobs316 openings · of 20
- #1Best cities for technology jobs7,178 openings · of 100
- #1Best cities for financial services pay after cost of living$173k · of 33
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills35% · of 100
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills in the West Coast35% · of 54
- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the West Coast902 jobs · of 47
Rankings about engineering jobs
- Best cities for software and engineering jobs #1 San Francisco (3,412 openings)
- Best cities for engineering pay after cost of living #1 San Mateo ($216k)
- Most requested AI skills in engineering jobs #1 AI tools in daily work (6.1%)
- AI tools named most often in engineering jobs #1 Claude (1.7%)
- Employers with the most engineering jobs #1 Amazon (2,992 roles)
Pay compared with the market
This listing pays about $445,000 a year. Across 412 open staff software engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $222,000 to $264,000 and the median is $240,000. That is 85% above the median, above the middle half of those listings.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
Staff Software Engineer salaries by state · Check your own pay
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among software developers, AI is already used for some of the tasks. Measured exposure for software developers: 29% (some).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
Say which you have and which you want to build. We use it to match you to jobs like this one.
About the job
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
Platform Intelligence turns each new Claude model's abilities into API features that developers can build on. Our goal is to make the full intelligence of each model available through the API. We own the capabilities that shape what Claude can do for developers: tool use, built-in tools such as web search and code execution, thinking controls, structured outputs, and the memory, files, and skills APIs.
We also run the API side of every Claude model launch, including its safety features and controls. That means getting the API ready for each new model, coordinating with research, safeguards, product, and cloud partners, and making sure the model, its features, the SDKs, and the docs all ship together on launch day.
The work sits where research meets product. We work with new models before they are public. When a model gains a new ability, we work out what it should look like as an API, build it, and ship it to developers on our own platform and on cloud platforms. Those decisions shape how developers first use each model. We also own API versioning and the evals that tell us a capability works in production.
What you'll do
You'll lead the design, build, and operation of API capabilities used by developers around the world. You'll work with research to understand what a new model can do and turn that into an interface that is simple, durable, and hard to misuse.
You'll lead the API side of new model launches. You'll plan the work, track readiness across teams, resolve the issues that come up late, and see the launch through on the day. Between launches, you'll make the next one faster and safer.
You'll set technical direction for work that spans several teams, write clear design proposals, review API designs from other teams, and mentor engineers on the team.
Representative projects
Lead API readiness for a Claude model launch, so that every feature works on day one across our API, SDKs, docs, and cloud partners
Take a new model ability from research prototype to public API feature, from interface design to production rollout
Build and operate tools such as web search and code execution under real traffic
Automate the manual parts of a model launch
Build the evals that catch a capability regression before a launch
You might be a good fit if you:
Have led technical projects that spanned several teams, from design through launch and operation
Have designed and operated production distributed systems where correctness, latency, and availability all matter
Have strong product sense and care about API design and developer experience
Make sound technical decisions with incomplete information, as models and priorities change close to a launch
Explain tradeoffs clearly to research, product, and go-to-market partners, including non-engineers
Make the engineers around you better through design review and mentoring
Use AI tools as a regular part of how you design, build, and review software
Care about the societal impacts of your work and Anthropic's mission to build safe, beneficial AI
Strong candidates may also have:
Building public APIs, SDKs, or developer platforms
Working with large language models, including tool use, agents, or evals
Running launches or migrations with fixed deadlines and many dependent teams
Building tools for agents, such as search or code execution
Storage, memory, or context systems at scale
Integrating with cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure
Deadline to apply: None. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Location Preference: Preference will be given to candidates based in NY, SEA, SF or the Bay Area given the current location of team.
The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.
For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.
Annual Salary: $405,000 — $485,000 USD
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.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.
Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.
How we're different
We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.
The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This