Staff+ Software Engineer, Databases
Build and scale the core database infrastructure powering Claude at Anthropic, including data plane/control plane, data movement (CDC, migrations), and caching systems that support millions of users and frontier AI research across multi-cloud environments. Requires deep expertise in distributed databases and production storage systems.
About the job
Key Responsibilities
- Drive the technical direction for database solutions used across Product and Research
- Design and implement database solutions that scale to support millions of users across Claude's product ecosystem
- Build and scale database systems through 100x+ growth while maintaining reliability and performance
- Build the database platform that lets Anthropic engineers ship without thinking about databases or scaling
- Architect data storage solutions that operate across GCP, AWS, first-party deployments, third-party deployments, and other environments
- Develop database infrastructure that serves both product and research workloads with different performance characteristics
- Build data movement infrastructure (migration tooling, backfill, and change data capture pipelines) that safely consolidates and moves data across the organization
- Design and operate caching infrastructure, including CDC-driven cache invalidation, that keeps Anthropic's hottest paths fast and correct
- Partner with product and research teams to understand data requirements and build infrastructure that accelerates their work
- Optimize database performance, reliability, and cost efficiency at scale
- Make build-vs-buy decisions for database technologies
Minimum Qualifications
- Significant experience as a software engineer building and operating production database or storage systems
- Deep knowledge of distributed database architectures and OLTP systems at scale
- Proficiency with SQL and at least one major relational or distributed database engine (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, Spanner, CockroachDB, DynamoDB)
- Track record of leading large, complex infrastructure projects as an engineer or tech lead
- Ability to balance moving quickly with the reliability needs of production systems
- Strong technical leadership and cross-functional collaboration skills
Preferred Qualifications
- 10+ years building and scaling database systems, with 3+ years leading large-scale projects or teams
- Experience scaling databases through periods of rapid growth at high-growth companies
- Experience operating Spanner, CockroachDB, TiDB, AlloyDB, or other globally distributed SQL databases in production
- Experience with Redis, Temporal, vector databases, or async job processing frameworks
- Experience with change data capture (Debezium or similar), large-scale data migration, or streaming data infrastructure
- Experience building multi-cloud or hybrid cloud database solutions
- Knowledge of database orchestration and automation at scale
- Contributions to database internals, storage engines, or related open source projects
Note: Prior AI/ML infrastructure experience is not required. We value deep infrastructure and database expertise from any domain.
Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
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.
Skills
Distributed Databases, Oltp Systems, SQL, Postgres, MySQL, Spanner, Cockroachdb, DynamoDB, Redis, Change Data Capture, Debezium, Database Migration, Multi-Cloud Infrastructure, Database Orchestration
Similar jobs
Data Engineering jobs
Anthropic
San Francisco, CABuild and operate the data foundations behind AI safeguards, including production pipelines, data stores, governance controls, and internal tooling. The role requires strong Python and SQL skills, production data-platform experience, and expertise in reliable, privacy-conscious systems across multiple cloud environments.
The Voleon Group
New York, NYLeads the design and delivery of scalable data infrastructure, services, and developer tooling while shaping technical direction and mentoring engineers. Requires 8+ years of software engineering experience, strong systems design expertise, and proficiency in a modern programming language.
Vercel
San Francisco, CAStaff Data Platform Engineer leading the architecture and development of financial data infrastructure for revenue reporting, billing, forecasting, and compliance. Requires 8+ years of data engineering or architecture experience, strong streaming and warehouse expertise, and the ability to mentor engineers and partner with Finance and Audit leaders.
Vanta
Remote
Leads the re-platforming of Vanta’s compliance data layer from MongoDB to schema-aware PostgreSQL across high-throughput Kafka and S3 pipelines. The role requires staff-level distributed systems expertise, migration leadership, and strong experience with relational and document data modeling.
Anyscale
San Francisco, CA
Staff Software Engineer responsible for designing and scaling Ray Data’s distributed data-processing infrastructure for large-scale AI training and inference. Requires 6+ years of production software and architectural ownership experience, plus deep distributed-systems expertise and strong Python skills.