Anthropic
Staff Engineer, Datacenter Server Lifecycle
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Staff Engineer, Datacenter Server Lifecycle
Staff Engineer, Datacenter Server Lifecycle
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
Anthropic is expanding beyond cloud infrastructure, and this role sits at the heart of that effort. As a Staff Engineer on the Datacenter Server Lifecycle team, you will own the end-to-end operational journey of every machine in our facility—from initial provisioning and deployment, across its working life, through maintenance and refresh, and all the way to decommissioning.
This is greenfield work: you will help define the processes, tooling, and operational standards that govern how we run and retire hardware at scale.
A distinguishing aspect of this role is its deep intersection with security. The machines in our datacenter handle some of the most sensitive workloads in AI—training frontier models and serving millions of users interacting with Claude. Ensuring that every machine in the fleet is trusted, attested, and operating with a verified chain of integrity—from hardware up—is a core part of the job, not an afterthought. You will partner closely with our Infrastructure Security team to define and enforce trusted compute standards across the lifecycle, from secure provisioning through end-of-life handling.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the build-out of automation to support datacenters containing tens of thousands of servers.
- Define and own the end-to-end server lifecycle strategy, from:
- Provisioning and deployment
- Operation and maintenance
- Refresh cycles
- Decommissioning
- Maintain automation and operational procedures for common lifecycle events (e.g., hardware failures, firmware upgrades, fleet rotations).
- Partner closely with Infrastructure Security to design and enforce trusted compute standards across the server lifecycle.
- Work closely with our Networking team to ensure end-to-end connectivity across all sites.
- Build and maintain tooling to track machine health, configuration, and operational status across the entire datacenter fleet.
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Minimum Qualifications
- Hands-on experience with server hardware, including:
- Rack deployment
- Cabling
- Troubleshooting
- Understanding failure modes at scale
- End-to-end understanding of hardware lifecycle management:
- Asset tracking
- Provisioning workflows
- Maintenance scheduling
- Decommissioning practices
- Proficiency in at least one programming language (e.g., Python, Rust, Go, Java).
- Working knowledge of modern cloud infrastructure, including:
- Kubernetes
- Infrastructure as Code
- AWS, GCP
- Ability to communicate clearly and build consensus with a wide range of stakeholders.
- Comfort navigating ambiguity and making progress on complex, cross-functional problems.
- Willingness to travel occasionally to datacenter sites across North America.
Preferred Qualifications
(Any combination of these will be strongly considered.)
- 8+ years of experience in:
- Datacenter operations
- Hardware infrastructure management
- A closely related discipline
- Hands-on experience with:
- GPU or AI accelerator hardware (e.g., NVIDIA A100/H100, AMD MI300, Google TPUs, AWS Trainium)
- Understanding their operational demands
- Familiarity with modern provisioning tooling such as:
- coreboot
- LinuxBoot
- u-root
- Experience building or contributing to:
- Datacenter automation or fleet management platforms
- Experience deploying server operating system distributions across thousands of hosts.
- Background in:
- Large-scale capacity planning and hardware refresh strategy (ideally at hyperscaler or large cloud provider)
- Experience with:
- Trusted compute and hardware security concepts (e.g., secure boot, TPM, hardware attestation, firmware verification)
- or a strong desire to develop deep expertise in this area.
Compensation & Logistics
- Annual Salary: £325,000—£390,000 GBP (range)
- Minimum Education: Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience).
- Field of Study: Must demonstrate relevance through coursework, training, or professional experience.
- Hybrid Policy: Currently expects at least 25% in-office presence. Some roles may require more.
- Visa Sponsorship: We sponsor visas, and we retain an immigration lawyer to assist with the process.
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We encourage applications from all backgrounds. Not every strong candidate will meet every listed qualification. Underrepresented groups are particularly encouraged to apply despite potential imposter syndrome.
Your Safety & Our Legitimacy
To protect against potential scams:
- Legitimate Anthropic recruiters only contact from @anthropic.com email addresses.
- In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies (they’ll disclose this).
- Never provide money, fees, or banking information before your first day.
- Always verify opportunities via anthropic.com/careers.
What Makes Us Different?
We believe the highest-impact AI research will be big science—larger-scale, unified efforts. At Anthropic, we:
- Treat AI research as an empirical science, comparable to physics and biology.
- Host frequent research discussions to ensure we’re pursuing the most high-impact work.
- Value collaboration, clarity, and cross-functionality.
Our research continues many of the foundational directions from earlier work:
- GPT-3
- Circuit-Based Interpretability
- Scaling Laws
- AI & Compute
- Trustworthy AI Safety
- Learning from Human Preferences
Ready to Join?
Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, offering:
- Competitive compensation and benefits
- Optional equity donation matching
- Generous parental leave and vacation
- Flexible working hours
- A collaborative office space
Applications are welcoming regardless of experience—IMPORTANT: Your safety matters. If in doubt, check anthropic.com/careers for legitimate announcements.
Apply now to shape the future of AI safety alongside us.
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