Get a Job at Anthropic: Interview Process and Top Questions

Learn how to prepare for Anthropic interviews and how to get a job at Anthropic with this in-depth guide.

We break down the Anthropic interview process and the top questions you should expect to answer.

About Anthropic

What is Anthropic?

Anthropic is an AI safety company founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, and several former OpenAI researchers. The company builds Claude, a large language model used by millions worldwide, and has positioned itself as a safety-first alternative in the AI space. Anthropic has reported over 18.9 million monthly active users of its AI tools and products.

Where is Anthropic located?

Anthropic is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York, Seattle, and London. The company has grown from roughly 50 employees in 2021 to well over 1,000. Most roles are office-based with a hybrid policy that expects staff to be in one of its offices at least 25% of the time. Relocation support is available.

Who does Anthropic hire?

Anthropic values people who think carefully about the implications of the technology they build. The company's careers page describes a hiring philosophy rooted in intellectual curiosity and safety-mindedness. It says it doesn't expect every hire to have direct AI or ML experience, and that many current team members had no prior hands-on experience with these systems.

About half of Anthropic's technical staff hold advanced degrees, but the company also states that many successful colleagues never went to college. The most common engineering roles are software engineer, research engineer, machine learning engineer, and research scientist. Anthropic doesn't hire many product managers compared to other tech companies of its size.

You can learn more about the company's culture and technical direction on the Anthropic engineering blog.

Anthropic Interview Resources

• Anthropic Software Engineer Interview Guide
• Anthropic Machine Learning Engineer Interview Guide
• Anthropic Infrastructure SWE Interview Guide
• Anthropic Interview Questions
• Anthropic Interview Experiences
• Anthropic Company Hub

Anthropic Interview Process

The Anthropic interview process typically includes these stages:

• Recruiter screen(s): One or two calls covering your background, motivation, and compensation expectations
• Technical phone screen: A 60-90 minute remote coding assessment in a collaborative environment
• Onsite loops: Two separate interview days covering system design, coding, culture fit, behavioral topics, and a technical project deep dive

The Anthropic hiring process moves quickly, and candidates consistently report strong communication from recruiters throughout. Every interviewer in the loop will ask some version of "Why Anthropic?" so have a specific, thoughtful answer ready.

How long does the interview process take?

Most candidates report the Anthropic interview process taking 1 to 4 months from application to offer. The company is known for moving efficiently and keeping candidates informed at each stage.

Does Anthropic's interview process vary by role?

Yes. Software engineering candidates typically face coding challenges focused on practical, real-world problems. Machine learning engineers encounter rounds centered on MCP tooling, context window management, and model reliability. For ML/prompt engineering roles, candidates may use Claude Sonnet as a working tool during technical rounds. For other roles (including most SWE positions and the AI Safety Fellowship), AI tool usage is not permitted during live interviews.

How does Anthropic make hiring decisions?

The onsite is split into two loops scheduled on separate days. If you don't pass Loop 1, Loop 2 is cancelled. This structure means Anthropic makes an initial pass/fail decision after your first day of onsite interviews before investing more time. The most common reason candidates fail is the culture fit round, not the technical rounds. An Anthropic recruiter told one candidate directly that "so many people she has seen getting rejected because of the behavioral aspect of things, even if they have done really well technically."

Recruiter Screen

What is Anthropic's recruiter screen?

The recruiter screen is a 15-30 minute phone call covering your background, experience, and interest in Anthropic. Some candidates go through two separate recruiter calls: the first handles initial screening, and a second, more senior recruiter takes over after you pass to discuss compensation and share preparation materials.

Anthropic's recruiters are more probing than average. They'll ask about the specific platforms and models you've worked with, the challenges you've faced, and why Anthropic specifically (not just "AI in general"). Recruiters also initiate compensation discussions early, often quoting a base salary range or presenting two compensation bands and asking which one works for you. This is a negotiation tactic, not a final offer. Treat any number shared at this stage as informational.

Before the onsite, your recruiter will send you blog posts and documents about Anthropic's approach to AI safety. You're expected to have read and formed opinions on these materials by the time you reach the culture fit rounds.

How should I prepare for the recruiter screen?

Research Anthropic's specific products and mission before the call. Recruiters want to hear that you've thought about why this company, not just why AI. Be ready to discuss your technical background in concrete terms, including the tools and models you've actually used.

Technical Phone Screen

What is Anthropic's technical phone screen?

The technical phone screen is a 60-90 minute remote assessment conducted in a shared coding environment like CodeSignal, Replit, or Google Colab. The format uses multi-tiered challenges that start simple and escalate as you progress.

Anthropic favors practical problems over traditional algorithm puzzles. You might build a web crawler for a small website, then make it multi-threaded for parallel crawling, then create a filtered dictionary of the crawled data. Or you might implement an in-memory database with progressively more complex features like TTL (time to live) and advanced querying. For ML engineering roles, the screen may focus on MCP tooling, error diagnosis, and improving model reliability for long-running tasks.

The interviewer will continuously layer new constraints onto your initial solution. They're assessing how you think and communicate as much as whether your code runs. Candidates report that finishing the entire problem isn't always expected; explaining your logic clearly when you run out of time can still advance you to the next round.

What coding environment does Anthropic use?

Python is the default language. The environment varies by role: CodeSignal for automated assessments (especially for fellowship positions), Replit for live coding with an engineer, and Google Colab for ML-focused rounds that require GPU access. Check your setup and environment before the interview to avoid wasting time debugging configuration issues.

The Onsite Loops

What are Anthropic's onsite loops?

Anthropic's final interview round is split into two separate loops, each conducted on a different day. Loop 1 typically includes system design, coding, and a culture fit round. Loop 2 covers an experiences and goals discussion plus a technical project deep dive. Each round runs 55-60 minutes. If you don't pass Loop 1, Loop 2 is cancelled.

The loops may be conducted in person at Anthropic's offices or virtually, depending on your location and the role. All interviewers in your loop will typically come from the same engineering group (for example, all from infrastructure), though they may represent different teams within that group.

What types of rounds are in the onsite?

System design rounds focus on LLM infrastructure and distributed systems. Candidates have been asked to design batch inferencing APIs, build systems to optimize GPU usage with batching constraints, and distribute large model files across thousands of machines. These questions directly relate to problems the team is currently working on, and interviewers sometimes don't have a predetermined "right" answer. They want to see how you reason through novel constraints.

Coding rounds use real-world problems, not LeetCode. You might work with stack trace profiler samples to find the slowest function, build an image processing pipeline using unfamiliar libraries, or implement file deduplication logic. The interviewer will introduce edge cases and breaking scenarios as you go. At staff level, you're expected to anticipate test cases yourself rather than waiting for the interviewer to surface them.

Culture fit is the round with the highest failure rate. Two interviewers (one active, one shadowing) will ask about your ethics, values, and how you handle moral conflicts at work. They'll push 3-4 follow-up levels deep. One candidate described it as "interrogative" and compared it to being questioned by a legal team. Questions include: "Tell me about a time you had a moral conflict with the work," "What concerns do you have with our mission?", and "How do you decide between delivery speed and security?" The recruiter may warn you beforehand that "we will ask you something which might make you uncomfortable."

Experiences and goals is conducted by a manager-level interviewer and covers your career trajectory, past projects, conflict resolution, and what kinds of teams you thrive on. Expect questions focused on the negative: teams you didn't like, strategies you found limiting, feedback that was hard to receive.

Technical project deep dive requires you to prepare a presentation (candidates report using Notion) on a past project you owned end to end. Two interviewers will probe your technical decisions, cross-team coordination, and how you handled tradeoffs. This round functions more like a behavioral interview than a technical one.

Anthropic Interview Questions

These are examples of real interview questions asked at Anthropic. Practice more with our Anthropic interview question bank.

Coding

• Build a web crawler with multi-threading
• Write a function that determines the longest-running function based on stack trace samples
• Write a function that can read and eliminate duplicate files
• Implement a function to justify a list of words within a given width
• Write functions to serialize and deserialize a list of strings
• Implement an in-memory database with progressively complex features

System Design

• Design a batch inferencing API
• Build a system to batch queries and optimize GPU usage
• Design a scalable system for a token-generation service that handles up to 100,000 requests per second
• Design a file distribution system across thousands of machines with bandwidth constraints
• Design a file cache system

Behavioral and Culture Fit

• Tell me about a time you had a moral conflict with the work. Who did you talk to? What did they say that changed your mind?
• What concerns do you have with Anthropic's mission or direction?
• How do you balance delivery speed with security concerns?
• Tell me about a time you received negative feedback and how you handled it
• Describe a time you disagreed with your manager and later changed your mind
• What are the ethical risks of deploying agentic AI systems in high-stakes environments?

Machine Learning

• If you discovered that your model was exposing sensitive data from its training set, what would you do next?
• How do you adjust the creativity of generative AI models?
• Define hallucinations in LLMs
• Design an agentic AI system that can autonomously adapt to new tasks
• How do you keep users' data safe and private when building AI systems?

Tips for Getting Hired at Anthropic

Read the safety materials your recruiter sends you. Anthropic's recruiters share blog posts and documents about the company's approach to AI safety before the onsite loops. The culture fit interviewers will ask what you interpreted from these materials and expect you to have formed your own opinions. Candidates who skip this reading are at a significant disadvantage.

Prepare for discomfort in the culture round. Anthropic's culture fit interview asks about moral conflicts, ethical pressure from leadership, and personal values in ways most tech interviews don't. Practice talking about times you felt genuinely uncomfortable at work, pushed back on a decision, or raised an ethical concern. The interviewers will follow up 3-4 levels deep on every answer, so shallow stories won't hold up.

Study the team's actual work, not just generic problems. Anthropic's system design questions relate to problems the team is currently solving. Research the specific engineering challenges of the group you're interviewing with (inference optimization, safety tooling, agent infrastructure). The interviewers may not have a known solution and are genuinely curious how you'd approach it.

Don't treat the comp discussion as final. Anthropic's recruiters raise compensation early and use tactics like presenting two bands or quoting a base range. These are informational anchors, not offers. A simple "Thanks for sharing, I'm sure we can work something out once we get through the process" keeps your options open.

Follow Anthropic employees on X. Current engineers share insights about the company's work, culture, and direction that can help you prepare more specific answers for the "Why Anthropic?" question that every interviewer will ask.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Anthropic hire new graduates?

Anthropic doesn't currently offer traditional internships. They do run an AI Safety Fellowship, a six-month paid position that functions closer to a full-time role than an internship. Fellows work on research projects mentored by senior researchers, and strong performers can convert to full-time positions.

Can I reapply to Anthropic if I'm rejected?

Anthropic asks rejected candidates to wait 12 months before reapplying. They'll consider an earlier application if something meaningful has changed in your situation, such as gaining directly relevant experience or completing significant research.

Does Anthropic provide interview feedback?

Candidates consistently report that Anthropic does not provide feedback after rejection. If you want to learn which round may have been the issue, you can try reaching out to your recruiter with a specific guess (for example, "I assume the system design round was the issue"), which sometimes prompts a more detailed response than a generic feedback request.

Is Anthropic's interview process conducted virtually?

The recruiter screens and technical phone screen are always remote. The onsite loops can be conducted in person at Anthropic's offices or virtually, depending on your location and the role. Candidates located far from the Bay Area, New York, Seattle, or London have completed full loops remotely.

Do I need AI experience to work at Anthropic?

No. Anthropic's careers page states that many roles don't require a background working with LLMs, AI, or ML tools, and that numerous current team members didn't start with hands-on experience in these systems. That said, solid familiarity with AI coding assistants is practically necessary for technical rounds, even if you haven't shipped AI systems professionally.

Prepare for Your Anthropic Interview

• Review recently asked Anthropic interview questions and answers from real candidates.
• Practice with our mock interview tools.
• Get role-specific Anthropic interview guides.