Software Engineer, Staff: Applied AI, Science & Engineering

About the role

At 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.

Responsibilities

• Build the agent harnesses and research loops that let Claude carry a problem from literature review through hypothesis generation, simulation, analysis, and design iteration
• Connect scientific computing and simulation tools (finite element, CFD, electromagnetic, or molecular modeling codes, for example) so Claude can drive them reliably and at scale
• Design and build evaluations that tell us whether Claude's work is actually right, and be honest about where it isn't
• Sit with scientists and engineers at partner organizations to learn their problem, data, tools, and constraints, and turn open-ended questions into well-specified, verifiable tasks with clear success criteria
• Prototype with partners, ship pilots into their workflows, and cut anything that doesn't move the problem forward
• Turn what works in one engagement into shared tools, reusable components, and documented processes the next one can start from
• Be the technical voice on how Claude performs on science and engineering work, explaining results, limits, and tradeoffs clearly to researchers, engineering leads, and non-technical stakeholders alike
• Partner with our research and product teams to share where models fall short on science and engineering work, and help shape what comes next

You may be a good fit if you

• Have 8+ years of experience building software, with strong engineering fundamentals and comfort across the stack, from data pipelines to tooling to quick interfaces
• Have built real systems with large language models, including agents, tool use, or evaluations
• Have worked on technical problems in a science or engineering field, such as physics, materials, chemistry, or electrical or mechanical engineering
• Have a track record of zero-to-one work in startup or startup-like environments
• Can work directly with expert users, understand their workflows deeply, and still keep the focus on building the right system rather than the one first requested
• Have good judgment about what can and can't be verified, and are comfortable saying a result isn't good enough yet
• Bring high agency, pick up new domains quickly, and hold strong opinions loosely
• Communicate clearly with researchers, engineers, and external partners, and care about the societal impacts of your work

Strong candidates may also have

• An advanced degree or research experience in a physical science or engineering field
• Hands-on experience with scientific computing and simulation, numerical methods, or optimization
• Experience in industrial R&D, a national lab, or a deep-tech company in areas like energy, materials, manufacturing, or hardware
• Experience building alongside customers or technical partners, for example in forward-deployed, applied AI, or solutions engineering roles, ideally where you also owned the software that came out of it
• Experience with ML research, RL environments, or evaluation design

Candidates need not have

• 100% of the skills listed above
• Formal certifications or education credentials
• Expertise in every scientific domain we work in
• Direct machine learning or AI research experience