Staff Engineer, Datacenter Server Lifecycle

Job Overview

As a Staff Engineer on the Datacenter Server Lifecycle team at Anthropic, you will own the end-to-end operational journey of every machine in our global facilities. This role involves defining services, tooling, standards, and processes for operating critical hardware at scale, powering frontier model development and serving.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop automation for datacenters housing tens of thousands of servers.
• Define and manage the end-to-end system lifecycle strategy, including provisioning, deployment, operation, maintenance, refresh, and decommissioning.
• Collaborate with Infrastructure Security to design and enforce trusted compute standards across the server lifecycle.
• Work with the Networking team to ensure end-to-end connectivity across all sites.
• Create and maintain tooling to track machine health, configuration, and operational status across the datacenter fleet.

Requirements

• Hands-on experience with server hardware, including deployment, cabling, troubleshooting, and understanding failure modes at scale.
• Understanding of hardware lifecycle management: asset tracking, provisioning workflows, maintenance scheduling, and decommissioning practices.
• Proficiency in at least one programming language (e.g., Python, Rust, Go, Java).
• Knowledge of modern cloud infrastructure, including Kubernetes and large-scale cloud providers.
• Strong communication and consensus-building skills.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and tackle complex problems.
• Occasional travel to datacenter sites across North America.

Preferred Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in datacenter infrastructure management or a related field.
• Experience with GPU or AI accelerator hardware and their operational demands.
• Familiarity with modern provisioning and OS tooling like LinuxBoot and NixOS.
• Background in large-scale capacity planning and hardware refresh strategy.
• Experience with trusted compute and hardware security concepts.

Logistics

• Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent.
• Required field of study: Relevant to the role.
• Location-based hybrid policy: 25% office time.
• Visa sponsorship: Available.