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Staff + Software Security Engineer, Labs

AnthropicSan Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WASecurity
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Salary
$320K — $485K USD
Job type
Full-time
Experience
Senior
Posted
5 Oct 2026
Status
Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

Staff + Software Security Engineer, Labs is a full-time role at Anthropic based in San Francisco, CA, New York City, NY, or Seattle, WA. This position suits an ambitious generalist with deep technical expertise who wants to tackle high-risk security challenges for frontier artificial intelligence systems.

Role Overview

Anthropic is hiring a Staff + Software Security Engineer for its Security Labs team across San Francisco, New York City, and Seattle. The role involves running high-risk, rapid-iteration security projects focused on defending frontier artificial intelligence systems against advanced adversaries. Engineers on this team own projects end to end, testing unconventional security ideas, building prototypes, and either handing successful solutions over to production teams or documenting valuable lessons from failed bets.

Key Responsibilities

Own Security Labs projects end to end by scoping bets, building prototypes, testing against real workloads, and managing hand-offs or documented exits.
Stand up novel security infrastructure rapidly, including isolated clusters, attestation chains, hypervisor and runtime work, and verification tooling.
Find receiving teams early, collaborate during development, and deliver solutions that teams want to own.
Work embedded with research and infrastructure teams to test how workflows survive proposed security measures and document friction points.
Transform experimental results into concise writeups and costed contingency plans that shape long-term security architecture.
Select future project bets and influence broader industry security standards.

Requirements

Care deeply about the trajectory of artificial intelligence and solving critical security problems.
Possess deep expertise in at least one specialized area such as firmware or hardware security, applied cryptography, OS, kernel, or hypervisor internals, formal methods and verification, reverse engineering and exploit development, or high-assurance and cross-domain systems.
Demonstrate a history of building and shipping things under personal direction, such as founding a company, maintaining an open-source project, or publishing impactful research.
Show a track record of identifying problems independently and seeing them through.
Jump comfortably between different domains and layers of the stack.
Run prototypes or experiments focused on answering hard questions rather than permanent shipping.
Write clearly to translate weeks of work into actionable documentation.
Adapt perspectives when evidence changes and embrace being a generalist among specialists.
Focus primarily on defense and making systems resilient.
Program strongly in Python alongside at least one of Rust, Go, C, or C++ to stand up real infrastructure.

Nice to Have

Experience inside airgapped or high-side environments like classified networks, cross-domain solutions, ICS, SCADA, or financial trading infrastructure.
Background in offensive security, red teaming, or vulnerability research with calibrated threat intuition.
Familiarity with machine learning infrastructure including training pipelines, distributed schedulers, inference serving, and accelerator hardware.
History of working in rapid-iteration environments like startups, applied research groups, independent consulting, or small security shops.

Skills and Tools

Python
Rust
Go
C
C++
Hypervisors
Zero-knowledge proofs
Attestation chains
MicroVMs
Formal verification pipelines

Salary and Benefits

Annual base salary ranges from $320,000 to $485,000 USD.

About the Company

Anthropic builds reliable, interpretable, and steerable artificial intelligence systems with the mission of ensuring AI remains safe and beneficial for users and society. The organization brings together committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders to advance frontier artificial intelligence responsibly.

How to Apply

Candidates should apply directly on the official Anthropic careers page.

Skills and tech stack

PythonRustGoCC++Zero-Knowledge ProofsMicroVMsHypervisorsAttestation ChainsFormal Verification

Questions candidates ask

What locations are available for this role?

This role is available in San Francisco, CA, New York City, NY, or Seattle, WA.

What is the compensation range for this position?

The annual base salary ranges from $320,000 to $485,000 USD.

What kind of team is Security Labs at Anthropic?

Security Labs runs a portfolio of high-risk, high-expected-value security projects with short timelines, operating on weeks rather than quarters, where a meaningful fraction of bets are expected not to succeed.

What programming languages are required?

Candidates must be strong programmers in Python alongside at least one of Rust, Go, C, or C++.

Do I need machine learning infrastructure experience to apply?

Machine learning infrastructure experience is preferred rather than strictly required, though familiarity with training pipelines, distributed schedulers, inference serving, or accelerator hardware is helpful for conversing with researchers.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official Anthropic careers page.

Apply on company site