Design Engineer - Creative AI & Canvas Tools | Anthropic

As a Software Engineer / Design Engineer on the Claude Design team, you will build and shape the visual, creative capabilities of Claude—empowering users to create polished visual work, interactive prototypes, product mockups, slides, and animations. You will work on expanding Artifacts in Claude (including tools like Claude Design, Slides, and Motion), operating at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research and real-world application. In this craft-heavy, high-autonomy role, you will architect real-time interactive canvases, complex editor UIs, design-system inference engines, and AI-driven generation workflows. You will sweat the interaction details, profile rendering latency, partner directly with AI researchers, and validate features with active users to turn AI visual generation into a primary creative tool.

Key Responsibilities

Editor Architecture, Canvas Engineering & Craft

• Canvas & Editor Architecture: Set the technical direction and architecture for creative tools—including canvas rendering, complex editor UIs, real-time collaboration engines (multiplayer WebSockets), and rich asset import/export pipelines.
• Craft & Quality Bar: Own the visual polish and interaction craft, treating rendering latency, frame responsiveness, and system reliability as first-class engineering concerns.
• Shared Creative Foundations: Architect reusable product primitives and shared foundations that allow Anthropic to rapidly build and ship new creative tool suites that integrate seamlessly.

Research Prototyping & User-Centric Iteration

• Research Collaboration: Partner directly with AI researchers to rapidly prototype user experiences around vision, multimodal generation, and steerability, helping elevate the quality of what Claude generates.
• Direct User Discovery: Conduct user feedback sessions and usability studies, analyzing how creators interact with Claude Design to translate real-world insights into product roadmaps.
• Product Exploration: Help decide which new creative modalities (motion graphics, 3D, interactive UI) the team explores next.

Requirements

Full-Stack Mastery & Design Sensibility

• Design Sensibility & Craft: Strong design instinct with a high bar for craft, paying obsessive attention to interaction micro-details, motion, typography, and visual polish.
• Full-Stack Engineering Skills: Production-grade full-stack web development skills covering both complex frontend web applications and backend service infrastructure.
• User-Centric & High Agency: Deeply user-centric mindset—validating concepts with actual users, focusing on problem definitions before jumping to solutions, and operating with a strong bias toward shipping.
• Thriving in Ambiguity: Ability to operate with high autonomy in fast-moving, uncertain environments, holding strong technical opinions loosely based on empirical evidence.
• Mission Alignment: Genuine care for Anthropic's mission to build steerable, trustworthy AI systems and an awareness of the societal impacts of AI technology.

Preferred Qualifications

• Extensive experience building or architecting visual collaboration software, graphic design tools, or digital creation suites (e.g., Figma, Canva, Webflow).
• Deep frontend expertise in graphics rendering engines (WebGL, Canvas API, Shaders, 3D/Three.js, or Web Animations).
• Experience developing real-time collaborative (multiplayer) web applications using WebSockets, CRDTs, or Operational Transformation (OT).
• Hands-on experience designing user interfaces and interaction models specifically for generative AI tools or LLM applications.
• Proven track record of building and shipping products from 0-to-1, or creating shared platform primitives used by multiple engineering pods.
• Deep performance optimization experience, including browser profiling, end-to-end latency tracing, and rendering pipeline optimization.

Total Rewards & Benefits

• Compensation & Equity: Annual base salary ($405,000 – $485,000 USD) + competitive equity grants + optional equity donation matching.
• Healthcare & Wellbeing: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage for employees and dependents.
• Time Off & Workplace Benefits: Generous paid vacation and parental leave policies, flexible working hours, and a collaborative office environment in San Francisco.
• Visa Support: Comprehensive immigration legal support and visa sponsorship assistance.