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Systems Engineer, Claude Code

San Francisco, CA | Seattle, WA

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.

At Anthropic, we believe new AI capabilities are best achieved through secure foundations, not in spite of them. As capabilities grow more advanced, it is critical that progress moves forward safely and for the benefit of all society. It is the reason why security sits at the center of our work, and not as an afterthought. 

We're specifically looking for a Systems Engineer to help us build the core infrastructure for Claude Code's terminal integration and native execution capabilities. The ideal candidate loves to use Claude Code and has deep expertise in systems programming, shell integration, native packaging, and cross-platform development. This role requires someone who thrives at the intersection of low-level systems work and developer tooling, with a passion for creating seamless CLI experiences.

Responsibilities:

  • Design, build, and maintain Claude Code's core terminal integration system, including shell discovery, process lifecycle management, and cross-platform execution environments
  • Architect native packaging solutions using modern bundling technologies like Bun, creating standalone executables that work seamlessly across macOS, Linux, and Windows
  • Implement and optimize system-level features including shell environment capture/restoration, terminal state persistence, and native module integration (NAPI, WASM)
  • Implement low-level terminal protocols including OSC sequences, ANSI escape codes, and terminal capability detection for rich CLI experiences across different terminal emulators
  • Build and maintain the multi-architecture build pipeline, managing asset bundling, code signing, and platform-specific optimizations for production deployments
  • Work on performance-critical systems code including process spawning, memory management, signal handling, and secure file operations across different deployment modes
  • Develop cross-platform compatibility layers and testing infrastructure to ensure Claude Code works reliably on all supported operating systems and architectures
  • Collaborate with security teams on sandboxing, secure asset extraction, and preventing sensitive information leakage in distributed binaries

You may be a good fit if you:

  • Have 8+ years of industry software engineering experience with significant systems programming expertise
  • Are excited about AI-assisted coding as a tool to enhance developer productivity and creativity—not replace human ingenuity
  • Have deep knowledge of POSIX systems, shell environments, and terminal emulation
  • Are experienced with native application packaging and cross-platform distribution
  • Have built production systems using Rust, Zig, C and/or C++
  • Understand the intricacies of process management, IPC, and native module integration
  • Have worked on developer tools or CLI applications used by thousands of engineers
  • Care about the societal impacts and ethics of your work

Strong candidates may also have experience with:

  • Building and maintaining complex CLI tools with rich terminal UIs
  • Windows NAPI development and cross-platform native modules
  • Bun runtime internals and its compilation features
  • Zig programming language and cross-compilation toolchains like cargo-zigbuild
  • Shell scripting at an advanced level (Bash, Zsh, PowerShell)
  • Binary packaging strategies and single-file executable creation
  • Performance profiling and optimization of native applications
  • Secure coding practices for distributed binaries
  • Terminal emulator protocols and escape sequences
  • Contributing to systems-level open source projects

This is an opportunity to shape the future of AI-driven development tools while working alongside top engineers and researchers in the field.

The expected salary range for this position is:

Annual Salary:

$320,000 - $560,000 USD

Logistics

Education requirements: We require at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

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.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed.  Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

How we're different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues.

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