Staff Network Engineer

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

We're looking for network engineers who are also skilled software developers to help build and scale the networking infrastructure that powers Claude and our AI research. This is a hands-on role spanning everything from physical network builds to software-defined networking, from extending connectivity to new data center sites to building robust monitoring and automation systems.

You'll be joining a small, growing team working on mission-critical infrastructure for one of the most consequential AI systems in the world. The role calls for genuine technical depth in networking and the flexibility to solve problems across the stack—from configuring routers to writing automation, from troubleshooting physical connectivity to designing scalable architectures.

Key responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and maintain high-performance networks across multiple data center sites, including managing physical infrastructure, routing protocols, and network security
• Write software to automate network provisioning, configuration management, and operational workflows
• Implement comprehensive monitoring, build debugging tools, investigate outages, and drive continuous reliability improvements
• Plan and execute network expansions to new sites and facilities, including working with vendors, managing physical builds, and migrating live traffic
• Partner with compute, storage, and ML infrastructure teams to optimize network performance for AI workloads and troubleshoot complex distributed systems issues
• Participate in on-call rotation and lead response to network-related incidents

Minimum qualifications

• Strong software development skills in Python, Go, or similar languages, with experience building network automation, tooling, or infrastructure software
• Deep understanding of networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, BGP, ISIS, OSPF, VLANs, VPCs, routing, switching, and network security
• Hands-on experience building and operating production networks end-to-end—from physical layer (cabling, optics, hardware) through software-defined networking
• Comfort working with Linux, command-line tools, and infrastructure-as-code approaches
• Track record of debugging complex distributed systems issues that span network, compute, and application layers
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across teams

Preferred qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in network engineering, with hands-on experience building and operating production networks
• Experience scaling networks in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and/or on-premises data centers
• Background in DevOps/SRE practices including monitoring, observability, and reliability engineering
• Experience with Kubernetes networking, container orchestration, or service mesh technologies
• Familiarity with AI/ML infrastructure and the unique networking requirements of large-scale training clusters
• Prior experience in environments requiring broad technical ownership—startups, small ISPs, or similar contexts where wearing multiple hats was the norm
• Generalist background beyond networking (web applications, embedded systems, systems programming, etc.) that reflects comfort operating across the stack