Staff Software Engineer

Staff Software Engineer, Claude DesignSan Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WAAbout AnthropicAnthropic'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 roleAt Anthropic, we're building AI systems that are safe, beneficial, and transformative. Our mission is to develop AI that benefits humanity, and we believe the most powerful capabilities emerge when we thoughtfully bridge the gap between research breakthroughs and real-world applications.Claude Design is the newest product from Anthropic Labs, the internal accelerator behind Claude Code and MCP. It lets anyone collaborate with Claude to create polished visual work: interactive prototypes, product mockups, slides, one-pagers, and marketing collateral. Start from a prompt, an image, or your own codebase, and Claude builds a first version that you refine through conversation, inline comments, direct edits, and live adjustment controls, then hand off to Claude Code to build for real. We launched in research preview in April 2026, and the product is new enough that the engineers who join now will define what it becomes.We're looking for Software Engineers to help build and shape Claude Design. This is a craft-heavy, frontend-leaning role: you'll create the canvas, real-time editing, design-system inference, and AI-driven generation experiences that make AI-generated design feel like a tool people reach for first– not a demo. You'll work at the intersection of cutting-edge research and real-world application, rapidly building and testing new experiences, partnering directly with researchers and users, and helping to generate the crucial insights that shape where the product goes next.ResponsibilitiesBuild and ship Claude Design's core surfaces (the design canvas, real-time editing, inline comments, and the live adjustment controls Claude generates), shipping early and often to maximize learningCollaborate closely with research teams to turn frontier vision and generation capabilities into intuitive, high-craft design experiencesWork directly with designers, internal test users, and external partners to gather feedback, iterate quickly, and validate (or invalidate) product conceptsSet technical direction for the hardest frontend problems: editor and canvas architecture, real-time collaboration, design-system inference, rich import/export, and performance as the product scalesDesign and run experiments to test product hypotheses, from prototype tests with users to evaluations of generation quality, balancing creative exploration with rigorous measurementOwn the quality bar for how the product looks and feels, treating latency, responsiveness, and reliability as first-class concerns rather than afterthoughts, and advocate for user experience and design considerations early in the processStrengthen the handoff to Claude Code so designs translate cleanly into production, and feed insights back to research about model effectiveness and where capabilities can improveOperate as a technical leader on a small team: shape the roadmap alongside design and product, make pragmatic architecture decisions, and mentor engineers as the team growsYou may be a good fit if youHave 8+ years of experience building full-stack applications with deep frontend strength, and a track record of zero-to-one work in startup or startup-like environmentsHave set technical direction for a team or workstream and mentored other engineers, while staying hands-on in the codeHave strong design sensibility and a high bar for craft; you sweat interaction details, motion, and polishHave strong technical skills across modern web stacks (React, TypeScript, Node.js, Python, Go, etc.), including complex client-side state, performance, APIs, databases, and cloud technologiesAre comfortable working in a fast-moving environment where priorities shift and shipping quickly mattersAre deeply user-centric: you enjoy validating ideas with actual users before over-investing and you talk about problems before solutionsHold strong opinions loosely: you advocate forcefully for ideas but change your mind based on evidenceAre a generalist who can move comfortably between frontend, backend, and product problems as the work demandsWork independently with good judgment about what matters, without needing constant directionCommunicate effectively and translate complex AI capabilities into intuitive experiencesCare about the societal impacts and ethics of your workStrong candidates may also haveExtensive experience working with or building visual collaboration & creative tools (e.g., Figma, Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc), and have strong opinions on how they could become more magical experiencesHands-on experience with UI/UX for AI-powered applications, and fluency collaborating closely with designersBackground conducting user research, interviews, and usability testingDeep frontend expertise in canvas rendering, complex editor UIs, design-system tooling, or graphics work (WebGL/shaders, 3D, animation)Experience with real-time, collaborative applications (multiplayer editing, WebSockets) or complex, high-performance frontend interactionsCandidates need not have100% of the skills listed aboveFormal certifications or education credentialsDirect machine learning or AI research experienceDeadline to apply: None. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.Annual Salary: $320,000 - $485,000 USDLogisticsMinimum education: Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experienceRequired field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experienceMinimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the positionLocation-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 differentWe 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