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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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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.

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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.

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Skills this job asks for

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  • Logistics
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Go-to-market

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