Staff+ Software Engineer, Memory & Search

About this role

Anthropic

Staff+ Software Engineer, Memory & Search

New York City, NY +6RemoteFull-timeLead & above

Checked 3h ago

Posted 19 Oct 2026 on Anthropic's careers page

What the interview will test

Software Engineer interviews are usually assessed on

• Coding Proficiency
• System Design Fundamentals
• Debugging & Root Cause Analysis
• Data Modeling & Storage
• Testing & Quality Engineering
• Stakeholder Communication

Practicing for this role builds your session around these skills, with this posting's own requirements folded in.

What you'd do

• Design, build and ship memory and search experiences in Claude.ai, Cowork and Claude Code, owning them end to end from the backend service through the model's tools to the user interface
• Run product experiments on the memory and search stack: form a hypothesis, build a demo, put it in front of real users, measure, and make a clear persevere-or-pivot call
• Shape how Claude uses memory and retrieval inside its agentic loop, including what the model stores, when it searches, how results are ranked and presented, and how the user stays in control
• Define and track the metrics that tell us whether memory is actually making Claude more useful, and build the evaluations that keep quality honest as the system evolves
• Improve search relevance and recall across conversations and memories, working across embeddings, hybrid retrieval and ranking as well as the interface that presents results
• Partner with product, design, privacy, legal and safeguards to ship features that respect user consent and enterprise requirements such as customer-managed encryption keys and data retention policies
• Raise the bar on product quality for the team through design reviews, code reviews and the standards you set for latency, polish and reliability

What they're looking for

• Experience building and operating user-facing products used by a large number of people, including the backend services behind them
• Experience building agentic systems or LLM-powered products, including tool use, retrieval and prompt or context design
• Strong programming skills in Python and TypeScript, with experience across backend services and web front ends
• A track record of taking a product or feature from an idea to launch, and iterating on it based on usage data and user feedback
• Experience defining product metrics and running experiments to make decisions
• Strong product judgment: you notice when something feels off and you fix it, and you can explain why a design choice matters to users
• Strong written and verbal communication, with experience working closely with product managers, designers and non-engineering partners
• Interest in AI safety and Anthropic's mission

Nice to have

• Experience as a founder, early-stage engineer, or someone who has taken a product from zero to one
• Experience building search or retrieval systems: embeddings, vector search, hybrid lexical and semantic retrieval, or ranking
• Experience building evaluations for LLM or ML systems, or measuring the quality of retrieval and ranking
• Experience on consumer products with strong retention, or on personalization systems
• Experience shipping features that handle sensitive data or meet enterprise requirements such as customer-managed encryption keys, data residency or HIPAA
• Experience with latency-sensitive, performance-critical product work
• Experience mentoring engineers or setting technical direction for a team

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