--- title: 'Staff + Sr. Software Engineer, Cloud Inference at Anthropic' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-sr-software-engineer-cloud-inference-anthropic-san-francisco-y0fctmsbztx6' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-11' --- # Staff + Sr. Software Engineer, Cloud Inference at Anthropic - **Company:** Anthropic - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $320k–$485k - **Posted:** 2026-06-03 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/anthropic/jobs/5231496008 ## Job description ## 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 The Cloud Inference team scales and optimizes Claude to serve the massive audiences of developers and enterprise companies across AWS, GCP, Azure, and future cloud service providers (CSPs). We own the end-to-end product of Claude on each cloud platform, from API integration and intelligent request routing to inference execution, capacity management, and day-to-day operations. Our engineers are extremely high leverage: we simultaneously drive multiple major revenue streams while optimizing one of Anthropic's most precious resources: compute. As we expand to more cloud platforms, the complexity of managing inference efficiently across providers with different hardware, networking stacks, and operational models grows significantly. We need product-minded backend engineers who can navigate these platform differences, design the services and abstractions that work across providers, and make architectural decisions that keep us reliable and cost-effective at massive scale. Your work will increase the scale at which our services operate, accelerate our ability to reliably launch new frontier models and innovative features to customers across all platforms, and ensure our LLMs meet rigorous safety, performance, and security standards. ## Key responsibilities - Design, build, and own backend services and infrastructure that serve Claude across multiple CSPs, accounting for differences in compute hardware, networking, APIs, and operational models - Work cross-functionally with internal inference, product API, systems, and security teams, among others, and with CSP partners to stand up the full serving stack on new cloud platforms, resolve operational issues, and influence provider roadmaps - Build and evolve CI/CD automation systems, including validation and deployment pipelines, that reliably ship new model versions to millions of users across cloud platforms without regressions - Design interfaces and tooling abstractions across CSPs that enable cost-effective inference management, scale across providers, and reduce per-platform complexity - Contribute to capacity planning, autoscaling, and workload routing strategies that match supply with demand and direct requests to the most cost-effective accelerator and region - Analyze observability data across providers to identify performance bottlenecks, cost anomalies, and regressions, and drive remediation based on real-world production workloads ## Minimum qualifications - Have significant software engineering experience, with a strong background in high-performance, large-scale distributed systems serving millions of users - Have experience building or operating services on at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure), with exposure to Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code, or container orchestration - Are curious about LLM serving; prior inference or ML experience is not required - Thrive in cross-functional collaboration with both internal teams and external partners - Have experience working with external partners to align goals and deliver impact - Are a fast learner who can quickly ramp up on new technologies, hardware platforms, and provider ecosystems - Are highly autonomous and take ownership of problems end-to-end, including work that falls outside your job description ## Preferred qualifications - Direct experience working with CSPs to scale infrastructure or products across multiple platforms, navigating differences in networking, security, privacy, billing, and managed service offerings - Hands-on experience with capacity management, cost optimization, or resource planning at scale across heterogeneous environments - Solid understanding of multi-region deployments, geographic routing, and global traffic management - Proficiency in Python or Rust 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: $320,000—$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](http://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 research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences. Come work with us! Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about [our policy](https://www.anthropic.com/candidate-ai-guidance) for using AI in our application process. ## About Anthropic ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Anthropic is an AI safety and research company building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. - **Entity Type**: Private (Public Benefit Corporation) – [anthropic.com](https://www.anthropic.com/company) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, CA, USA – inferred from job listings on [anthropic.com/jobs](https://www.anthropic.com/jobs?lang=us) - **Founded**: Not publicly available - **Founders**: Not publicly available (the company website lists Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei on the Board of Directors but does not explicitly identify them as founders – [anthropic.com/company](https://www.anthropic.com/company)) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: AI safety and research; frontier AI model development - **Target customers**: B2B – businesses, nonprofits, civil society groups, and end-users of its AI tools (e.g., Claude) - **Mission/purpose**: “Making AI systems you can rely on” and “the responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity” – [anthropic.com](https://www.anthropic.com/) and [anthropic.com/company](https://www.anthropic.com/company) ## Products & Services - **Claude**: AI assistant “designed to be helpful, honest, and harmless.” Deployed via API and direct interfaces for businesses, nonprofits, and individuals. Type: SaaS/API – [anthropic.com/careers](https://www.anthropic.com/careers) and [anthropic.com](https://www.anthropic.com/) ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company) - **Key Metric**: Total funding not disclosed in provided sources; the company operates with a large team and active hiring (56 open roles as of the search date) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly available from the provided search results (the company page lists board members including Reed Hastings and Vas Narasimhan, but does not specify investors) - **Growth Signals**: 56 open roles across research, engineering, product, and operations; emphasis on scaling the team while maintaining a “high-trust, low ego” culture – [anthropic.com/jobs](https://www.anthropic.com/jobs?lang=us) ## Competitive Advantages - **Safety-first differentiation**: Anthropic treats AI safety as a systematic science, investing heavily in interpretability, steerability, and reliability research. - **Interdisciplinary team**: Researchers, engineers, policy experts, and operators work closely together; engineers often co-author research papers. - **Public Benefit Corporation structure**: Legally committed to long-term benefit of humanity, not just shareholder value – [anthropic.com/company](https://www.anthropic.com/company) ## Strategic Focus - **“Ignite a race to the top on safety”**: Pushing the industry toward safer AI through research, product deployment, and collaboration with governments and civil society. - **Act for the global good**: Making decisions that maximize positive long-term outcomes for humanity, including bold safety measures – [anthropic.com/careers](https://www.anthropic.com/careers) ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: “High-trust, low ego” organization that values what you can do over pedigree. About half of technical staff have no prior ML experience; half have PhDs. Engineers do research and researchers do engineering. - **Remote/hybrid policy**: Most staff are in the Bay Area and come to the office regularly; some work remotely and visit one week per month. Flexible during relocation. - **Benefits**: Comprehensive health/dental/vision, 22 weeks paid parental leave, fertility benefits (Carrot), $500/month wellness stipend, annual education stipend, home office stipend, daily meals in office, retirement matching, equity donation matching, visa sponsorship for eligible roles. - **Interview process**: Technical roles use live coding (Colab/CodeSignal); non-technical roles are conversational. Accommodations available. No internships currently – [anthropic.com/careers](https://www.anthropic.com/careers) ## Sources 1. [Anthropic Company Page](https://www.anthropic.com/company) 2. [Anthropic Homepage](https://www.anthropic.com/) 3. [Anthropic Careers Page](https://www.anthropic.com/careers) 4. [Anthropic Jobs Board](https://www.anthropic.com/jobs?lang=us) ## Other roles at Anthropic - [External Affairs, South Korea](https://feeny.ai/job/external-affairs-south-korea-anthropic-seoul-a7nxkng1fr5d) — Seoul, South Korea - [Solutions Marketing Manager, Cybersecurity](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-marketing-manager-cybersecurity-anthropic-san-francisco-zzr2zdh1cev0) — San Francisco, CA / Washington, DC - [Solutions Marketing Manager, Healthcare & Science](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-marketing-manager-healthcare-science-anthropic-san-francisco-h19djmmqw78y) — San Francisco, CA - [Social Escalations Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/social-escalations-program-manager-anthropic-san-francisco-sm93vmxek6vw) — San Francisco, CA / New York, NY / Seattle, WA - [Reseller Partner Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/reseller-partner-manager-anthropic-london-8zmvvvfzbcgy) — London, United Kingdom - [Executive Escalations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/executive-escalations-manager-anthropic-san-francisco-3jw4c23c6894) — San Francisco, CA / New York, NY / Seattle, WA - [Partnerships Manager, US Public Health](https://feeny.ai/job/partnerships-manager-us-public-health-anthropic-san-francisco-hmvpv4y96v4x) — San Francisco, CA / New York, NY - [Strategic Account Executive, Tech](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-account-executive-tech-anthropic-san-francisco-khv455swejxs) — San Francisco, CA - [Performance Engineer, Inference Engine](https://feeny.ai/job/performance-engineer-inference-engine-anthropic-san-francisco-jxvnvvb2b8e2) — San Francisco, CA / New York, NY - [Customer Trust Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-trust-specialist-anthropic-san-francisco-tgmf67zyhknf) — San Francisco, CA / New York, NY / Seattle, WA