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Staff Software Engineer, Code RL

AnthropicSan Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WAAI Research & Engineering
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Salary
Not listed
Job type
Full-time
Posted
25 Jul 2026
Status
Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

The Staff Software Engineer, Code RL position at Anthropic is a specialized technical role based in San Francisco, New York City, or Seattle, focusing on reinforcement learning systems for Claude. This opportunity suits an experienced engineer with deep Python expertise who enjoys shaping infrastructure for cutting-edge AI research.

Role Overview

Code RL at Anthropic drives reinforcement learning efforts behind Claude's coding capabilities by creating and scaling agentic coding environments. This engineering position provides unusual latitude to set technical direction and standards. Team members solve the engineering side of research efforts by embedding with research teams, learning their systems, and designing frameworks, APIs, and infrastructure that help researchers move faster. Professionals rotate off these teams after leaving behind well-organized systems that others can understand, own, and maintain. The work also encompasses maintaining the ongoing health of production reinforcement learning runs through monitoring, reliability, and triage tooling.

Key Responsibilities

Design widely-used APIs, frameworks, and abstractions for engineers and researchers, focusing on interface legibility and principled defaults.
Embed with research teams on a rotational basis to build supporting systems and transfer ownership upon completion.
Work directly in research codebases to improve reliability and structure without slowing down active experiments.
Anticipate silent failure modes and prevent them structurally using type safety, well-designed invariants, targeted testing, and refactoring.
Contribute to the reliability of production reinforcement learning systems by building monitoring, regression detection, and triage tooling.
Define engineering standards, review practices, and design patterns for a new team while mentoring researchers and engineers.

Requirements

Deep expertise in Python, including static typing, safe async and concurrency patterns, and writing performant code.
A proven track record of designing intuitive, safe APIs or frameworks adopted and built upon by other teams.
Experience working productively in large, evolving, or research-style codebases originally written by others.
Demonstrated ability to anticipate failure modes and prevent them structurally through system design, type safety, and testing.
Strong written and verbal communication skills to explain system designs to collaborators with diverse engineering backgrounds.
Comfort with ambiguity, including the ability to scope independent work from loosely defined problems to maintainable outcomes.
Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
Ability to meet the location-based hybrid policy requiring presence in an office at least 25% of the time.

Nice to Have

Experience building infrastructure, tooling, or frameworks for machine learning research or reinforcement learning workflows.
Familiarity with reinforcement learning concepts, agentic systems, or large language model training pipelines.
Experience building or operating large-scale distributed systems or client libraries on sandboxed, containerized, or remote execution platforms.
Background in large-scale data processing, dataset lifecycle management, or designing plugin systems and extensible class hierarchies.
Prior experience embedding with other teams, defining code standards, serving as a technical lead, or maintaining an open source project.

Skills and Tools

Python
Large Language Models (LLMs)
Distributed Systems
Reinforcement Learning Workflows

Salary and Benefits

Annual Salary range of $405,000 to $625,000 USD.
Competitive compensation and benefits package.
Optional equity donation matching.
Generous vacation and parental leave.
Flexible working hours and collaborative office spaces.
Visa sponsorship availability for qualifying candidates.

About the Company

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco with a mission to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems that remain safe and beneficial for humanity. Operating as a single cohesive team, the organization approaches AI research as an empirical science akin to physics and biology, prioritizing big science and long-term societal impact over smaller puzzles.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should visit the official Anthropic careers page to submit an application and review secure communication guidelines.

Skills and tech stack

PythonLLM

Questions candidates ask

What are the location options for the Staff Software Engineer, Code RL role?

The position is available in San Francisco, CA, New York City, NY, or Seattle, WA, with a hybrid policy requiring staff to be in the office at least 25% of the time.

What is the salary range for this position at Anthropic?

The annual base salary range for this role is between $405,000 and $625,000 USD.

Does Anthropic offer visa sponsorship for this role?

Yes, Anthropic sponsors visas for eligible candidates and retains an immigration lawyer to assist with the process when an offer is made.

What core programming expertise is required?

Candidates must have deep expertise in Python, including static typing, safe concurrency patterns, and performant code writing.

How should I apply for this job safely?

Applicants should apply directly through the official Anthropic careers page at anthropic.com/careers and verify that any recruiter communication originates from an @anthropic.com email address.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official Anthropic careers page.

Apply on company site