Anthropic Senior/Staff SWE, Inferencing Interview Experience
Anthropic · Staff · Software Engineer
The main thing is that Anthropic had a very small question bank. When I was interviewing, I already knew the system design question, and the coding questions were like five of them, which was kind of wild.
Interview process
I applied, and did a normal recruiter screen followed by a coding phone screen. After I passed that, hiring paused for the team, and then time passed until a different recruiter picked me back up for a virtual onsite. My onsite was a coding round, a system design round, a hiring manager round, a culture round, and a one-person technical presentation. At the time the question bank was small enough that I basically knew the kinds of questions coming, but Anthropic was one of my first loops, so I wasn't as sharpened as I should have been. I got pretty close but didn't get the offer, and my read is that the system design round hurt me the most.
Interview rounds · 7
- 1
Recruiter screen
BehavioralThe recruiter screen was pretty standard.
- Q1. Why are you interested in Anthropic?
- 2
Phone screen
CodingData Structures & AlgorithmsTechnicalMy first real round after the recruiter was a technical phone screen, around an hour, in something like Google Colab. The interviewer was friendly, and the question was medium-ish but very verbose, with a tougher follow-up that I didn't fully finish.
Q1. How would you convert stack samples to a trace?
How they answeredI treated it like a data structures problem, even though the prompt came with a lot of explanation and visuals. I talked through how to turn a series of stack samples into a trace, got the main solution out, and then hit a harder follow-up that was basically an optimization or constraint change on the same problem. I didn't finish that part, but I kept talking through my approach. The interviewer was friendly and the vibe still felt positive, which ended up being enough to pass.
Follow-up questions- Assume one of the original restrictions is removed. How would you handle the follow-up version efficiently?
- 3
Technical round
CodingTechnicalThe onsite coding round was one of their standard company-wide questions. I already knew the pool was small, but what made this one different from normal LeetCode was that I had to work with a real file environment instead of just doing everything in memory.
Q1. Find duplicate files.
How they answeredThis one was about finding duplicate files, but the twist was that it wasn't a clean algorithm sandbox. I had to write code that actually interacted with files, and then write a test that created files so I could prove the duplicate detection worked. They were fine with looking up syntax if needed. The base question felt straightforward, and the real signal was in the follow-ups and whether I could operate in a more realistic environment instead of just doing a textbook LeetCode function.
Follow-up questions- Write a test that creates files so you can validate your solution against real files.
- Handle follow-up variants on the same duplicate-file setup.
- 4
Technical round
System DesignTechnicalArtificial IntelligenceThis was the round I felt worst about. I expected an inferencing optimization discussion because the prompt sounded like my day job, but the interviewer was late, not very fun to talk to, and seemed to want a very specific architecture answer.
Q1. Design a batch inferencing API over GPU clusters.
How they answeredI went in expecting an inferencing optimization discussion because the prompt mentioned GPU clusters and batch inferencing, which is my background. Instead, the interviewer basically treated the model as a black box and wanted a more standard architecture answer, like job scheduling, API shape, queueing, and the rest of the system around it. That threw me off because some of the assumptions didn't feel realistic, and I pushed on that too directly. In hindsight I should have accepted the setup faster and just designed the surrounding system the way he wanted.
Follow-up questions- Assume the model is a black box and focus on the surrounding system, not the model internals.
- How would you structure the rest of the architecture to hit the optimization goal?
- 5
Final / onsite round
BehavioralCross-FunctionalTechnicalThe hiring manager round felt more signal-seeking than a lot of big tech HM chats I've done. She kept following up until she got a real read, and she explicitly told me she cared about technical detail, not just generic leadership stories.
Q1. Tell me about a technical decision you drove and how you got people on board.
How they answeredI answered with examples from past technical projects, but the main thing here was the follow-up pressure. She kept drilling on what I personally did, how big the team was, how I got buy-in on a technical decision, how I handled feedback, and how I resolved conflict. She told me up front to be as technical as possible, which is unusual for a hiring manager round. It was early in my interview cycle, so I know I was too wordy and slower to land the point than I would have been later.
Follow-up questions- How big was the team?
- How did you convey the idea?
- How did you make sure everyone was aligned?
- How do you receive feedback and resolve conflict?
- 6
Final / onsite round
BehavioralThe culture round was with a staff engineer outside my immediate org. He was nice, but it felt less structured than I expected, almost like he was deciding in real time what to ask next, and the prompts skewed unusually negative and introspective.
Q1. Why Anthropic, and what evidence shows their sincerity about their mission?
How they answeredI told him Anthropic had already been one of my top places to work, and I came in having done a lot of research on the company. The evidence I pointed to was how consistently leadership talks about the mission, especially the idea of racing to the top on safety instead of just racing to ship first. My read was that they want safety to be a competitive advantage that pushes the rest of the field to behave better too.
Q2. Do you have any critique or concerns about Anthropic's approach or direction?
How they answeredI said they position themselves as the more measured, safety-first company, and I do think that's part of the brand. At the same time, my honest take is that they probably regret not being first on some launches, and some of the we-held-it-back-for-safety story may also be post-hoc positioning. So I framed it as a tension: I buy the mission, but I also think they're still a competitive company trying to win.
- Q3. Can you tell me about a time you had significant disagreement with someone and later realized they were right?
- Q4. Is there a work process or decision strategy you strongly disliked?
Q5. Can you tell me about receiving challenging or emotionally difficult feedback?
Follow-up questions- Have you given difficult feedback to others?
- Have you had any difficult work relationships that required extra effort to make productive?
- Q6. Have you gone out of your way to uphold some value or principle?
- Q7. Has there been work that felt genuinely meaningful to you?
- 7
Final / onsite round
PresentationSystem DesignTechnicalThe technical presentation was just one-on-one, not a panel. I got to choose the topic, so I presented a recent project and walked through it like a reverse system design discussion.
Q1. Present a project of your choice.
How they answeredI picked a project I'd finished recently and walked through it end to end. It felt like a reverse system design round more than a formal presentation, just me explaining what I built and the decisions behind it to one interviewer.
Tips from the candidate
Do your research and actually prepare. There are a lot of resources out there, and at least when I interviewed, not using them was basically putting yourself at a disadvantage. Don't buy the idea that you can't prep for a company like this. You can, and you should. Also be ready for flipped behavioral questions, especially around feedback, conflict, and values, and make sure your system design prep covers regular architecture questions even if the prompt sounds like it should go deep into AI or model internals.
Company culture
My read was that Anthropic had a pretty small question bank at the time, although it sounded like they were starting to expand it. They also seemed more chaotic than a normal big tech loop on the logistics side: I cleared the phone screen, then sat in limbo because hiring paused, and later got re-engaged by a new recruiter when things moved again. On the interviewing side, some people were very clearly digging for specific signals, especially around feedback, collaboration, and mission alignment, but the interviewer training didn't feel uniform. It felt somewhere between org-specific and team-specific: a lot of my interviewers were from inferencing, but not necessarily the exact team I would have joined. Compared to some other big tech loops, the hiring manager round had way more follow-up depth, while the culture round felt less scripted than the company's written culture docs would make you expect.