Design Engineer, AI Capability Development (Education Labs)

Job Application for Design Engineer, AI Capability Development (Education Labs) at Anthropic

Design Engineer, AI Capability Development (Education Labs) San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY

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're skeptical of tutorials, onboarding flows, and engagement metrics. 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 the front-of-the-frontend: motion, polish, and interaction feel

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

You may be a good fit if you have:

Strong full-stack engineering with design sensibility

6+ years building and shipping web products, with deep expertise across the stack

Strong front-end craft: TypeScript/JavaScript, React, CSS—with an eye for interaction design, motion, and visual detail

Solid back-end and data pipeline experience: Python, API design, analytics infrastructure

A portfolio showcasing innovative interaction designs and high-quality implementations

Track record of independently driving features from prototype to production

Deep conviction about human capability

Strong perspective on how technology should enhance human capabilities rather than diminish them

Experience or genuine passion for skill development, HCI, developer tools, or products that help people become more capable

Skepticism of purely engagement-driven metrics; interest in measuring capability outcomes

Research mindset with product execution

Comfort with ambiguity and exploring undefined problem spaces

Ability to rapidly prototype, test with users, and iterate toward production

Strong instincts for product design and user experience, even without formal design training

Strategic leadership and coalition building

Experience setting vision, shaping team strategy, and building conviction across cross-functional stakeholders

Ability to build productive relationships with Product, Design, Research, and Engineering teams—especially when your team isn't the owner

Strong sense of prioritization—knowing what to build now, what to defer, and what to cut

Track record of influencing roadmaps and decisions beyond your immediate team

Strong candidates may also have:

Experience in developer tools, creative tools, learning platforms, or other products where user skill development and mastery matter more than time-on-site

Background in learning sciences, cognitive science, HCI, skill acquisition research, or educational psychology (formal or self-directed)

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

Strong candidates may also have

Background in learning sciences, cognitive science, HCI, or educational psychology

Experience in developer tools, creative tools, or learning platforms where mastery matters more than engagement

Published writing, talks, or open-source work on skill development or human-AI interaction

Experience building AI-native product experiences or working with LLMs in production

What this role is not

This is a hands-on technical role building product features, embedded within a research team. You'll provide technical guidance and help set direction, but this role doesn't involve people management off the bat. If you're looking to immediately transition into engineering management or lead a large team, this likely isn't the right fit.

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary: $300,000 - $405,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will…