anthropic
Founding Design Engineer, AI Capability Development
anthropic, San Francisco, California, United States, 94199
Founding Design Engineer, AI Capability Development
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 believe skill with AI is fundamental to human agency. Education Labs builds the paradigms that help people become genuinely more capable—not just more engaged.
This is a new kind of role: part researcher, part product builder, part interaction designer. You’ll be the second technical builder on a small team studying how AI transforms human capability—and shipping features based on what we discover. You’ll have significant creative license to define what “good” looks like, exploring new interaction patterns rather than optimizing existing ones.
We care about experiences that make users progressively more capable, curious, and empowered over time. This means integrating skill development into product design, using Claude itself as a capability‑building partner, and measuring success by how users actually grow.
You’ll operate as a one‑person technical shop: prototyping new ideas, establishing technical direction, and shipping production‑quality features to millions of users. You’ll need strong product instincts and clean interface design sensibilities, balanced with comfort in ambiguity and frontier thinking.
Responsibilities
Ship features that help users develop real skill with AI—measuring success by capability growth, not time‑on‑site.
Architect end‑to‑end prototypes (front‑end and back‑end) that test new interaction paradigms, with particular attention to motion, polish, and the feel of interactions.
Define technical direction for the team—establish patterns others can follow.
Build relationships across Product, Design, and Research to influence how skill development principles shape Anthropic’s broader product strategy.
Shape team strategy and roadmap—identify the highest‑leverage opportunities and build conviction across stakeholders.
Translate research insights about skill development and human‑AI collaboration into shipped product through close collaboration with researchers.
Document and share your work through clear writing, prototypes, and presentations that influence thinking across the organization.
Qualifications
Strong full‑stack engineering with design sensibility —6+ years building and shipping web products, deep expertise across the stack, solid Python back‑end and data‑pipeline experience, and an impressive portfolio of innovative interaction designs.
Deep conviction about human capability —a strong perspective on how technology should enhance human capabilities, genuine passion for skill development, HCI, or products that help people become more capable, and skepticism of purely engagement‑driven metrics.
Research mindset with product execution —comfort with ambiguity, rapid prototyping, user testing, and product design instincts even without formal design training.
Strategic leadership and coalition building —experience setting vision, shaping team strategy, influencing cross‑functional roadmaps, and building productive relationships with Product, Design, Research, and Engineering teams.
Strong Candidates May Also Have
Experience in developer tools, creative tools, learning platforms, or other products where user skill development is more important than time‑on‑site.
Background in learning sciences, cognitive science, HCI, skill acquisition research, or educational psychology.
Experience with experimentation frameworks, A/B testing, or analytics that measure capability development in production.
Previous experience in research labs, frontier tech companies, or startups with high autonomy and ambiguity.
Published writing, talks, or open‑source work on skill development, human‑AI interaction, or product philosophy.
Experience building AI‑native product experiences or working with LLMs in production contexts.
What This Role Is Not This is a hands‑on technical role building product features embedded within a research team. It does not involve people management off the bat, and is not a path to engineering management or leading a large team.
Compensation Base salary: $320,000 – $405,000 USD. Total compensation includes equity, benefits, and may include incentive compensation.
Logistics Education requirements:
At least a Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent experience.
Location-based hybrid policy:
All staff are expected to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time, though some roles may require more.
Visa sponsorship:
We sponsor visas when possible and will make every reasonable effort to obtain the necessary visa if an offer is extended.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every single qualification. Diversity of perspectives is essential to our mission.
How We’re Different We believe the highest‑impact AI research will come from big‑science, collaborative pursuits. Our work is shaped by empirical science and valued for long‑term impact. We prioritize communication skills and frequent research discussions to ensure we pursue the most meaningful work.
Equal Employment Opportunity As set forth in Anthropic’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law. We are a federal contractor and comply with all required self‑identification and reporting obligations. Voluntary self‑identification fosters inclusion but is not required for consideration.
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About the Role We believe skill with AI is fundamental to human agency. Education Labs builds the paradigms that help people become genuinely more capable—not just more engaged.
This is a new kind of role: part researcher, part product builder, part interaction designer. You’ll be the second technical builder on a small team studying how AI transforms human capability—and shipping features based on what we discover. You’ll have significant creative license to define what “good” looks like, exploring new interaction patterns rather than optimizing existing ones.
We care about experiences that make users progressively more capable, curious, and empowered over time. This means integrating skill development into product design, using Claude itself as a capability‑building partner, and measuring success by how users actually grow.
You’ll operate as a one‑person technical shop: prototyping new ideas, establishing technical direction, and shipping production‑quality features to millions of users. You’ll need strong product instincts and clean interface design sensibilities, balanced with comfort in ambiguity and frontier thinking.
Responsibilities
Ship features that help users develop real skill with AI—measuring success by capability growth, not time‑on‑site.
Architect end‑to‑end prototypes (front‑end and back‑end) that test new interaction paradigms, with particular attention to motion, polish, and the feel of interactions.
Define technical direction for the team—establish patterns others can follow.
Build relationships across Product, Design, and Research to influence how skill development principles shape Anthropic’s broader product strategy.
Shape team strategy and roadmap—identify the highest‑leverage opportunities and build conviction across stakeholders.
Translate research insights about skill development and human‑AI collaboration into shipped product through close collaboration with researchers.
Document and share your work through clear writing, prototypes, and presentations that influence thinking across the organization.
Qualifications
Strong full‑stack engineering with design sensibility —6+ years building and shipping web products, deep expertise across the stack, solid Python back‑end and data‑pipeline experience, and an impressive portfolio of innovative interaction designs.
Deep conviction about human capability —a strong perspective on how technology should enhance human capabilities, genuine passion for skill development, HCI, or products that help people become more capable, and skepticism of purely engagement‑driven metrics.
Research mindset with product execution —comfort with ambiguity, rapid prototyping, user testing, and product design instincts even without formal design training.
Strategic leadership and coalition building —experience setting vision, shaping team strategy, influencing cross‑functional roadmaps, and building productive relationships with Product, Design, Research, and Engineering teams.
Strong Candidates May Also Have
Experience in developer tools, creative tools, learning platforms, or other products where user skill development is more important than time‑on‑site.
Background in learning sciences, cognitive science, HCI, skill acquisition research, or educational psychology.
Experience with experimentation frameworks, A/B testing, or analytics that measure capability development in production.
Previous experience in research labs, frontier tech companies, or startups with high autonomy and ambiguity.
Published writing, talks, or open‑source work on skill development, human‑AI interaction, or product philosophy.
Experience building AI‑native product experiences or working with LLMs in production contexts.
What This Role Is Not This is a hands‑on technical role building product features embedded within a research team. It does not involve people management off the bat, and is not a path to engineering management or leading a large team.
Compensation Base salary: $320,000 – $405,000 USD. Total compensation includes equity, benefits, and may include incentive compensation.
Logistics Education requirements:
At least a Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent experience.
Location-based hybrid policy:
All staff are expected to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time, though some roles may require more.
Visa sponsorship:
We sponsor visas when possible and will make every reasonable effort to obtain the necessary visa if an offer is extended.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every single qualification. Diversity of perspectives is essential to our mission.
How We’re Different We believe the highest‑impact AI research will come from big‑science, collaborative pursuits. Our work is shaped by empirical science and valued for long‑term impact. We prioritize communication skills and frequent research discussions to ensure we pursue the most meaningful work.
Equal Employment Opportunity As set forth in Anthropic’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law. We are a federal contractor and comply with all required self‑identification and reporting obligations. Voluntary self‑identification fosters inclusion but is not required for consideration.
#J-18808-Ljbffr