Staff Software Engineer, Developer Productivity (Dev Environments) - Claude Code
Apply at source. Anthropic handles the application directly; Houtini doesn't take a fee from candidates or companies. We curate which companies appear; the listings come from yubhub.
What the team is looking for.
Job Overview
We're seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead our development environment end-to-end, focusing on speed, isolation, and validation. You will enhance the inner development loop for engineers building Claude, Anthropic's AI system.
Responsibilities
- Own the local and hosted development environment, ensuring rapid setup and seamless operation.
- Drive down cold-start times for fresh environments and maintain performance as the codebase grows.
- Design and implement an environment isolation model that allows free experimentation without risking shared systems.
- Develop and maintain pre-push validation to catch issues locally, reducing CI failures.
- Collaborate with platform and infrastructure teams to optimize repository and service topology.
- Lead technically across teams, gathering requirements and advocating for optimal solutions.
Requirements
- Significant experience in software engineering, particularly in backend or developer infrastructure.
- Proficiency in Python.
- Hands-on experience with containers (Docker), Kubernetes, and pod operations.
- Prior experience owning developer environments or workflows in a multi-team setting.
- Daily use of AI coding assistants in your development workflow.
Preferred Qualifications
- 7+ years of experience in backend or developer infrastructure engineering.
- Experience with Rust or Go.
- Track record of reducing cold-start times in complex stacks.
- Experience with environment isolation models or monorepo management.
- Familiarity with hermetic build systems like Bazel or Buck.
Compensation
The annual salary range for this role is $405,000 - $485,000 USD.
Benefits
Competitive compensation, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space.
Logistics
- Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent.
- Location-based hybrid policy: 25% office time.
- Visa sponsorship available.
About Anthropic
Anthropic aims to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems for safe and beneficial use.
- Python
- containers (Docker)
- Kubernetes
- developer infrastructure
- AI coding assistants
- Rust
- Go
- Bazel
- Buck
- hermetic build systems
- environment isolation models
- monorepo management
Other roles you might consider.
Filtered through the same AI-companies allowlist.
Senior Site Reliability Enigneer
Synthesia
Platform Security Engineering - OpenBMC
Anthropic
Systems Engineer, HPC (APAC)
Mistral AI
Maintenance Planner
xAI
Staff Software Engineer, Developer Productivity (CI/CD) - Claude Code
Anthropic
Software Engineer, Identity & Access Controls
Anthropic
New to AI work? Start with these.
Six pieces of orientation. Most AI-company job specs assume you've done this kind of hands-on work already. If you haven't, an afternoon with one of these is the cheapest way to close the gap.
Claude Desktop, from zero.
The agentic-AI assistant most of the people you'd be working alongside use every day. Install, configure, first useful prompts.
What MCPs areThe best MCPs for Claude Desktop.
MCP servers extend an AI assistant with tools and data. The catalogue most teams use. Useful technical context for any AI-engineering role.
Code with AIClaude Code, the complete beginners' guide.
The CLI for AI-paired development. Required reading if you're applying for any engineering role that mentions agents, or any role full stop.
Run a local modelHow to set up LM Studio.
Running a model on your own machine teaches you more about how AI products work in three hours than a year of using ChatGPT will.
The hardware realityBeginner's guide to AI hardware.
What the infrastructure under the model actually looks like. Useful context for infrastructure, applied-AI and hardware roles.
Browse the stackMCP catalogue.
Eleven MCP servers Houtini maintains or recommends. Each detail page describes a real piece of working AI infrastructure.