Joblaze summary

In this role, the Staff+ Software Engineer on the Safeguards team at Anthropic focuses on developing systems to monitor AI model behaviors and enforce usage policies. Key skills include proficiency in Python, experience with distributed systems, and familiarity with cloud infrastructure. This position is well-suited for senior engineers with a strong background in building large-scale systems and a solid understanding of security and compliance issues. Anthropic emphasizes collaboration across teams, making communication skills essential for success.

Joblaze insights

Listed about a month ago — first seen on Joblaze September 16, 2026. Last confirmed on Anthropic's careers page October 31, 2026.
Salary band is above the typical range for Backend roles (median ~$180,000).
Starts above 84% of 83 comparable staff backend roles in United States that list Python we track (median $217,000 across 34 companies). See Python salary trends
Python appears in 34.1% of 311 comparable staff backend roles in United States; infrastructure as code appears in 1% of 311 comparable staff backend roles in United States.

Quick facts

Is the Staff+ Software Engineer, Distributed Systems role remote?: It's hybrid — Anthropic expects some on-site time in New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA.
What's the salary range?: Anthropic lists $320,000–$485,000 for this role.
How much experience is required?: At least 8 years of relevant experience for this Staff+ Software Engineer, Distributed Systems role.
Where is the role based?: Anthropic is hiring for this position in New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA.
What's the tech stack?: Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: Python, distributed systems, infrastructure as code.
Does Anthropic sponsor work visas for this role?: Yes — the posting indicates visa sponsorship is available for the right candidate.
What seniority level is this role?: Anthropic targets staff-level candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?: Full-time for this Staff+ Software Engineer, Distributed Systems role at Anthropic.

From the original posting

About Anthropic

About the role

We are looking for software engineers to help build safety and oversight mechanisms for our AI systems. As a software engineer on the Safeguards team, you will work to monitor models, prevent misuse, and ensure user well-being. This role will focus on building distributed and scalable systems to detect unwanted model behaviors and prevent disallowed use of models. You will apply your technical skills to uphold our principles of safety, transparency, and oversight while enforcing our terms of service and acceptable use policies.

Responsibilities:

Independently scope and lead complex, multi-month infrastructure projects, from an ambiguous starting point through to a production system
Develop monitoring systems to detect unwanted behaviors from our API partners and potentially take automated enforcement actions; surface these in internal dashboards to analysts for manual review
Stand up and run deployments of those monitoring systems across multiple clouds, including inside cloud-provider partner environments where data residency laws apply. Keep the deployments consistent through shared deployment pipelines, smoke tests, observability, and alerting
Design and harden the sandboxed runtime that AI agents execute in: isolation, network egress controls, least-privilege data access, audit logging, and insider-risk controls
Manage cost and capacity for large volumes of long-running agent work, and set and meet service-level objectives for the platform
Partner with the engineers and researchers who write and evaluate the monitoring agents, and with security, privacy, and legal teams, so new detection work can ship quickly on a platform everyone trusts

You may be a good fit if you:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or comparable experience
Proficiency in Python, Distributed Systems, and Infrastructure as Code
Have worked across multiple cloud providers, or built infrastructure designed to be provider-agnostic
Have built and operated large-scale, distributed infrastructure, such as data platforms, control planes, or job schedulers
Have experience with sandboxing and isolation technologies (containers, microVMs, network policy) or with a systems language such as Rust
Strong communication skills and ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders

Strong candidates may also:

8+ years of experience in a software engineering position, not including internships
Have built systems that handle sensitive or regulated data, with requirements around access control, auditability, retention, and data residency
Have experience running LLM-based agents in production
Have experience with integrity, spam, fraud, or abuse detection and mitigation

Deadline 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 USD

Logistics

Standard company text repeated across Anthropic's postings is omitted here.

Staff+ Software Engineer, Distributed Systems