Staff Software Engineer, Developer Productivity (Dev Environments) - Claude Code

Job Overview

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead our development environment end-to-end, focusing on enhancing productivity for the team building Claude, an AI system designed for safety and reliability.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the local and hosted development environment, ensuring rapid setup and seamless operation.
• Optimize cold-start times for fresh development environments.
• Design and implement an environment isolation model to prevent risks to shared systems.
• Develop and maintain pre-push validation to catch issues early.
• Collaborate with platform and infrastructure teams to shape repository and service topology.
• Lead technically across team boundaries, gathering requirements and advocating for optimal solutions.

Requirements

• Significant experience in software engineering, particularly in backend or developer infrastructure.
• Proficiency in Python.
• Hands-on experience with containers (Docker), Kubernetes, and pod-level operations.
• Prior experience owning developer environments or workflows in a multi-team setting.
• Daily use of AI coding assistants in your development workflow.

Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in backend or developer infrastructure engineering.
• Experience with Rust or Go.
• Track record of reducing cold-start times in complex multi-service stacks.
• Familiarity with hermetic build systems like Bazel or Buck.
• Experience as a platform tech lead with broad context across the stack.

Benefits

• Competitive salary: $405,000 - $485,000 USD per year.
• Optional equity donation matching.
• Generous vacation and parental leave.
• Flexible working hours.
• Lovely office space.

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.