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Staff+ Software Engineer, VectorDB

Anthropic· Software Engineering - Infrastructure
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Hybrid (New York City, NY), Hybrid (Seattle, WA), Hybrid (San Francisco, CA)$320k - $485kFull-timePosted 4d ago

About the role

Role focused on the vector database layer powering Claude’s retrieval workloads, including index structures, storage, query execution, and serving, with emphasis on performance, scalability, cost, and architectural direction within Anthropic’s vector search infrastructure.

Responsibilities

  • Own the core of Anthropic's vector database layer: index structures, storage layout, query execution and the serving layer
  • Own production readiness - benchmarking against exact search, capacity planning, onboarding new workloads, and the operational tooling to run it at scale
  • Drive the recall, latency and cost trade-offs - quantization, filtered search, index build and refresh strategy, and how compute and storage are separated and scaled
  • Scale throughput by an order of magnitude as research and training demand grows, and assess bottlenecks in architecture, hardware or engineering bandwidth
  • Extend the retrieval stack toward hybrid retrieval - lexical search and fused ranking alongside vector search
  • Set the evaluation methodology for the system - recall targets, latency objectives, cost per query, and regression detection
  • Set technical direction for a growing team - lead design reviews, make architectural decisions, and mentor new engineers
  • Share the on-call for the systems you own

Qualifications

  • Direct experience building a vector database or approximate nearest-neighbor search system that ran in production at scale
  • Deep knowledge of ANN index structures (graph-based, clustering-based or disk-resident approaches), vector quantization and filtered search
  • Experience with search relevance and ranking
  • Strong systems programming skills in Rust, C++ or Go, including performance-critical and memory-intensive code
  • Experience designing and operating large-scale distributed storage or serving systems with strict latency and reliability requirements
  • A track record of independently scoping and delivering ambiguous, multi-quarter technical projects
  • Strong written and verbal communication, with experience driving alignment across teams with different priorities
  • Interest in AI safety and Anthropic's mission

Skills

Required:Vector database / ANN systemsANN index structuresVector quantizationFiltered searchSearch relevance and rankingSystems programming (Rust/C++/Go)Distributed storage / serving systems
Nice to have:Leadership / technical direction

Benefits

  • Competitive compensation and benefits
  • Optional equity donation matching
  • Generous vacation and parental leave
  • Flexible working hours
  • Office space for collaboration
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Anthropic

building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems

Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

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