Role Overview
The Staff+ Software Engineer, Privacy role at Anthropic involves building foundational privacy systems for frontier artificial intelligence models operating at massive scale. This senior position suits an experienced technologist eager to establish a dedicated privacy engineering function within a growing team across remote-friendly locations, San Francisco, Seattle, or New York City.
Key Responsibilities
Design and implement privacy-preserving architectures for large-scale AI training and inference systems using techniques such as differential privacy, federated learning, and secure multi-party computation.
Collaborate closely with researchers to deploy privacy-preserving training methods that safeguard user data while preserving overall model quality.
Construct core privacy infrastructure, encompassing automated data discovery, classification, access controls, audit logging, and lifecycle management.
Convert complex regulatory mandates like GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and the EU AI Act into practical technical implementations and automated compliance controls.
Architect robust data governance systems to monitor data lineage, purpose limitation, and retention throughout distributed artificial intelligence networks.
Lead comprehensive privacy reviews and threat modeling sessions for emerging models and features to identify risks and create scalable mitigations.
Team up with product and infrastructure departments to integrate privacy controls into inference systems, user interfaces, and data pipelines.
Create privacy engineering toolkits and frameworks allowing other team members to construct privacy-preserving features by default.
Build privacy-preserving analytics and measurement solutions that generate actionable insights without revealing individual user information.
Evaluate emerging academic and industrial privacy technologies while contributing to open-source tooling and industry standards.
Requirements
Twelve or more years of overall software engineering experience, featuring the creation and operation of large-scale infrastructure.
Three or more years of experience acting as a technical lead for large and complex projects.
Demonstrated experience applying privacy engineering concepts in production systems, such as privacy by design, data minimization, and purpose limitation.
Strong proficiency in Python, Go, or comparable programming languages alongside operational experience with production systems at scale.
Practical experience designing and implementing privacy infrastructure for massive user bases.
Direct familiarity with data governance, data classification, or data lifecycle management systems.
Solid comprehension of privacy regulations including GDPR and CCPA, with the capability to translate legal rules into technical designs.
Proven expertise in conducting privacy reviews, threat modeling, and risk assessments.
Clear written and verbal communication skills necessary to establish strong alignment across engineering, research, legal, and product departments.
Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field of study or an equivalent combination of education, training, and professional experience.
Nice to Have
Hands-on familiarity with privacy-enhancing technologies like homomorphic encryption or secure enclaves.
Background building privacy infrastructure or controls specifically tailored for machine learning or artificial intelligence workflows.
Experience establishing a privacy engineering practice or joining as an early hire in a specialized function.
Practical knowledge of distributed systems and cloud infrastructure operating at scale.
Active contributions to open-source privacy tooling, academic privacy research, or industry standards.
Skills and Tools
Python
Go
Differential Privacy
Federated Learning
Secure Multi-Party Computation
Distributed Systems
Cloud Infrastructure
Salary and Benefits
Annual salary range spanning from $405,000 to $485,000 USD.
Comprehensive compensation and benefits package.
Optional equity donation matching programs.
Generous vacation policies and parental leave options.
Flexible working hours.
Access to collaborative office spaces.
About the Company
Anthropic operates as a public benefit corporation dedicated to building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems that remain safe and beneficial for society. The organization approaches artificial intelligence research as an empirical science akin to physics and biology, bringing together researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders to solve large-scale challenges.
How to Apply
To submit an application for this position, please visit the official Anthropic careers page.
