Staff + Software Security Engineer

This role focuses on designing, building, and operating security foundations used across Anthropic, from threat modeling through production deployment and organization-wide adoption. You will lead end-to-end security services that strengthen authentication, authorization, cryptography, and zero-trust access controls.

Key Responsibilities

• Build security foundations including cryptographic frameworks, mTLS infrastructure, secure serialization, and authorization systems, with the goal of preventing entire classes of vulnerabilities.
• Collaborate with product, research, infrastructure, and other security teams to ensure frameworks integrate effectively with lower-layer security controls.
• Scope, design, and build security services and libraries end-to-end; maintain them in production; and drive resolution of ambiguous technical problems with minimal oversight.
• Design and operate a zero-trust access gateway that fronts Anthropic internal services.
• Develop and roll out authorization frameworks so services enforce least privilege consistently rather than implementing ad hoc access controls.
• Own cryptographic frameworks and libraries used across teams.
• Mentor engineers, contribute to hiring, and help grow security engineering culture across Anthropic.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building security-relevant systems in production, including leading complex initiatives independently.
• Strong programming skills in Go, Rust, or Python.
• Deep understanding of authentication and authorization systems, including OAuth 2.0 / OIDC, JWTs, service-to-service authentication, and policy-based access control.
• Hands-on experience with PKI, X.509, mTLS, and workload identity.
• Working knowledge of applied cryptography, including selecting and composing primitives, key management, and common library failure modes.
• Experience shipping and operating high-reliability services on Kubernetes across cloud and on-prem environments, including being on call.
• Track record of bringing clarity and ownership to ambiguous technical problems and driving them to resolution across teams.
• Strong developer experience orientation and clear communication across all levels of the organization.
• Passion for AI safety and the role security engineering plays in building trustworthy AI systems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building security frameworks or libraries adopted across an engineering organization, including driving organizational adoption.
• Experience building or operating a zero-trust / BeyondCorp-style access gateway or identity-aware proxy.
• Experience migrating a fleet to mTLS at scale, including certificate issuance and staged enforcement.
• Experience maintaining or contributing to open-source cryptographic libraries.
• Experience designing authorization systems using policy languages or relationship-based models.
• Familiarity with ML infrastructure, including training and inference serving.

Technical Focus

Go, Rust, Python, OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWTs, PKI, X.509, mTLS, Kubernetes

Education and Logistics

• Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience.
• Field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience.
• Experience level: Years of experience required will correlate with internal job level requirements for the position.
• Location: San Francisco, CA (hybrid). Staff are expected to be in one of the offices at least 25% of the time, though some roles may require more.
• Visa sponsorship: Offered, with reasonable efforts made if an offer is extended. An immigration lawyer is retained to assist.

Compensation

Annual salary: $32,000 - $485,000 USD