At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the strategy for cutting-edge cluster lifecycle management and collaborate across teams.
- Company: Join Anthropic, a pioneering AI company focused on safe and beneficial technology.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, hybrid work model, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Dynamic team environment with mentorship opportunities and a focus on operational excellence.
- Why this job: Shape the future of AI infrastructure and make a real impact in a fast-growing field.
- Qualifications: Expertise in distributed systems and cloud platforms; strong coding skills required.
About Anthropic
Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.
About The Role
Anthropic's Infrastructure organization is foundational to our mission of developing AI systems that are reliable, interpretable, and steerable. The systems we build determine how quickly we can train new models, how reliably we can run safety experiments, and how effectively we can scale Claude to millions of users — demonstrating that safe, reliable infrastructure and frontier capabilities can go hand in hand. Cluster Infra owns the full lifecycle of compute clusters at Anthropic. We build agent-driven automation for cluster provisioning and lifecycle management across all major cloud providers and our own datacenters. Our systems stand up clusters that are interconnected with high bandwidth, secure‑by‑default, and able to automatically drain and recover in response to failure. As a Staff engineer on this team, you'll set the technical direction for how Anthropic brings compute online - at a moment when the scale of that compute is growing faster than at almost any company in the world.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the technical strategy and roadmap for agent‑driven cluster lifecycle management - provisioning, updates and decommissioning
- Partner across teams to ensure new compute capacity is ingested on time
- Align with partner teams on physical build‑out and leverage cloud solutions to deliver high‑bandwidth inter‑cluster connectivity
- Collaborate with security owners to ensure clusters are provisioned secure‑by‑default
- Define and drive strategy on cluster scalability, homogeneity and fault tolerance
- Work closely with cloud providers and internal research, inference and product teams to shape long‑term compute, data, and infrastructure strategy
- Establish and evolve operational‑excellence practices: incident response, postmortem culture and on‑call health
- Support the growth of engineers around you through technical mentorship and coaching
Minimum Qualifications
- Deep expertise in distributed systems, reliability, and cloud platforms (e.g., Kubernetes, IaC, AWS/GCP/Azure)
- Strong proficiency in at least one systems language (e.g., Rust, Go, or Python), IaC proficiency with Terraform.
- Track record of leading complex, multi‑quarter technical initiatives spanning multiple teams or systems
- Ability to build alignment across senior stakeholders and communicate effectively at all levels
Preferred Qualifications
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, including time as a technical lead setting direction for a team
- Experience operating large‑scale compute infrastructure at hyperscale (100+ clusters, 10K+ nodes)
- Depth in one or more of: Kubernetes internals, cluster provisioning and management systems, cluster orchestration systems (Mesos, Borg‑like)
- Experience with cloud networking: VPC design and peering, Shared VPC/Transit Gateway, Cloud Interconnect/Direct Connect, Cloud NAT, cross‑cloud private connectivity, BGP and route control, edge load balancing and DDoS mitigation (Cloud Armor / AWS Shield)
- Experience with cluster and host networking: CNI (Cilium), eBPF, NetworkPolicy, multi‑NIC, sFlow, service mesh (Istio/Envoy/Linkerd, mTLS)
- Experience with cluster security: pod security standards and admission control, RBAC and least‑privilege IAM, node and container hardening, supply‑chain/image provenance
- Deep experience with infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform, Atlantis), workflow orchestration (Temporal, Argo Workflows)
- Skill in quickly understanding systems design tradeoffs and keeping track of rapidly evolving software systems
Annual Salary £325,000–£485,000 GBP
Logistics
- Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
- Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
- Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
- 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.
- Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren’t able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.
Staff Infrastructure Engineer, Cluster Infrastructure employer: Anthropic
At Anthropic, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer, fostering a collaborative and innovative work culture that empowers our engineers to shape the future of AI infrastructure. With a strong focus on employee growth through mentorship and technical leadership opportunities, we offer competitive salaries and a supportive environment where your contributions directly impact the development of safe and reliable AI systems. Located in a vibrant area, our hybrid work policy ensures flexibility while maintaining a strong team connection, making Anthropic a truly rewarding place to advance your career.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Staff Infrastructure Engineer, Cluster Infrastructure
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to current employees at Anthropic on LinkedIn or other platforms. Ask them about their experiences and any tips they might have for landing a role in the Cluster Infrastructure team.
✨Tip Number 2
Prepare for technical interviews by brushing up on your distributed systems knowledge and cloud platforms. We recommend doing mock interviews with friends or using online platforms to get comfortable with the format.
✨Tip Number 3
Showcase your projects! If you've worked on relevant infrastructure projects, make sure to discuss them during interviews. We love seeing real-world applications of your skills, especially in Kubernetes or IaC.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t forget to apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen by the right people. Plus, it shows you’re genuinely interested in being part of our mission at Anthropic.
We think you need these skills to ace Staff Infrastructure Engineer, Cluster Infrastructure
Some tips for your application 🫡
Tailor Your Application:Make sure to customise your CV and cover letter to highlight your experience with distributed systems and cloud platforms. We want to see how your skills align with our mission of building reliable AI systems!
Showcase Your Technical Expertise:Don’t hold back on detailing your proficiency in systems languages like Rust, Go, or Python. We’re looking for someone who can lead complex initiatives, so share examples of your past projects that demonstrate this.
Communicate Clearly:When writing your application, keep it clear and concise. We value effective communication, so make sure you articulate your thoughts well, especially when discussing technical strategies and collaborations.
Apply Through Our Website:We encourage you to apply directly through our website. It’s the best way for us to receive your application and ensures you don’t miss out on any important updates from our team!
How to prepare for a job interview at Anthropic
✨Know Your Tech Inside Out
Make sure you brush up on your knowledge of distributed systems, cloud platforms, and the specific technologies mentioned in the job description. Be ready to discuss your experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, and any systems languages like Rust or Go. This will show that you're not just familiar with the tools, but that you can also apply them effectively.
✨Showcase Your Leadership Skills
As a Staff Engineer, you'll need to demonstrate your ability to lead complex initiatives. Prepare examples from your past where you've successfully led projects across multiple teams. Highlight how you built alignment among stakeholders and communicated effectively at all levels. This will help the interviewers see you as a potential leader within their team.
✨Understand Their Mission
Anthropic is focused on creating safe and beneficial AI systems. Familiarise yourself with their mission and think about how your skills can contribute to this goal. During the interview, express your enthusiasm for their work and share ideas on how you could help enhance their infrastructure strategy.
✨Prepare for Technical Challenges
Expect to face technical questions or challenges during the interview. Practice solving problems related to cluster provisioning, fault tolerance, and security measures. Being able to think on your feet and demonstrate your problem-solving skills will impress the interviewers and show that you're ready for the challenges of the role.
