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Practising for the listing Security Data Engineer. Its requirements are filled in below. When you have an answer you like, paste it with your CV in Career Mirror to see which of the job's skills it shows.

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Security Data Engineer
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

Claude is trained and served on hardware in data centers Anthropic operates and in sites partners build and run for us. DCSE secures that footprint: the sites, the hardware moving through them, and the people and vendors who touch it. Security at that scale runs on data, and you'll be the engineer who owns it and the systems that produce it: component-level hardware inventory and chain of custody, fed by software that runs at our sites and on hosts, and continuous control monitoring, with the posture calculations that decide what each site is cleared to run.

You set the architecture, agree schemas and interfaces with the teams, operators and vendors that own the sources, build the pipelines, stores and tools, and run what you ship. The goal is security that runs itself: custody, access and evidence verified continuously from records, with tools and AI agents doing the reviews. We favor simple, standard controls and tools that can be verified over elaborate ones. We use Claude throughout our engineering workflow and expect you to as well.

You'll work with the rest of DCSE, including the engineers on its security monitoring platform, with Anthropic's compute and data center operations teams, and directly with data center operators, hardware vendors and logistics providers. The role is based in San Francisco, with remote applicants in the US considered, and involves regular travel to data center sites, which are critical infrastructure.

Key responsibilities

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Hardware inventory and chain of custody: own the component-level record of what hardware exists, where it is and who has handled it: the data model, the pipelines that join inventory and custody events from many source systems, change history on every record, and the tamper-evident stores behind it

•
Tools, automation and AI agents: build the tools and agents the team runs on this data: reconciliation, audit evidence exports, custody checks. When a review keeps costing people time, you build the tool or agent that retires it

•
Custody workflows and field software: build the workflows and the site and host software that capture custody events as they happen (a receipt, a move, a data wipe, a decommission) and enforce who is authorized to record them

•
Continuous control monitoring and posture: own the pipelines that turn check outcomes, assessment results and findings into per-control and per-site measures over time, against the compliance frameworks we and our partners are assessed against, and the posture calculation that decides what a site is cleared to run

•
Data quality: build coverage checks, reconciliation against sources and alerts on a silent or drifting feed, so a wrong or missing record is caught the same day; own retention and access controls on the records

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Integration and reporting: agree schemas and interfaces with the engineers who run the security monitoring platform, and build the query surfaces and reports the team, site leads and leadership use directly

Minimum qualifications

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Have designed and run production data systems (relational schemas, change data capture, batch or streaming pipelines and the services around them) and kept them correct: coverage measured, records reconciled against the source, alerts on silence, and a design that expects records to get corrupted or lost

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Have integrated with systems you did not control (inventory tools, ticketing systems, vendor APIs) and built data models that outlive any one source

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Have shipped software that runs outside a central service (host agents, site-local services, edge collectors) and kept it correct in the field, or built metrics a team made decisions on and defended them when challenged

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Have worked hands-on with data about physical assets or security controls: a hardware fleet, data center or supply chain inventory, asset custody, or the control and evidence data of a security or compliance program

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Read and review other people's code, and build with AI coding agents using Git and code review

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Own a domain end to end: set the approach, design and build it with the teams and vendors whose systems it depends on, and run it as something people use every day

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Write SQL and at least one general-purpose programming language well

Preferred qualifications

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Experience with asset management, supply chain or warehouse systems where serialized tracking and custody transfer are the core problem

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Experience building continuous control monitoring or metrics for a security or compliance program, or producing evidence an assessor accepted, for example against NIST SP 800-53, ISO 27001 or SOC 2

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Experience with risk or posture scoring that combines control results, findings and other evidence into a measure people make decisions on

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Familiarity with data center hardware and its lifecycle from receipt to decommission, and with sites and parties you did not control: colocation, cloud or GPU cloud operators, hardware manufacturers, logistics providers

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Have run software on many hosts or at remote sites with versioned rollout and a way to know each copy is still reporting

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Have built AI agents or automation that replaced recurring manual work

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:
$320,000 — $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 correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.

How we're different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.

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Requirements found

Training (must) Inventory (must) Logistics (nice) Compliance (must) Supply Chain (must) Sql (must) Writing (must) Sales (nice) Recruiting

What this posting asks for

Level: Not stated — The posting does not state a level or years of experience.

Main responsibilities

Hardware inventory and chain of custody: own the component-level record of what hardware exists, where it is and who has handled it: the data model, the pipe…
Tools, automation and AI agents: build the tools and agents the team runs on this data: reconciliation, audit evidence exports, custody checks. When a review…
Custody workflows and field software: build the workflows and the site and host software that capture custody events as they happen (a receipt, a move, a dat…
Continuous control monitoring and posture: own the pipelines that turn check outcomes, assessment results and findings into per-control and per-site measures…
Data quality: build coverage checks, reconciliation against sources and alerts on a silent or drifting feed, so a wrong or missing record is caught the same …
Integration and reporting: agree schemas and interfaces with the engineers who run the security monitoring platform, and build the query surfaces and reports…
Have designed and run production data systems (relational schemas, change data capture, batch or streaming pipelines and the services around them) and kept t…
Have integrated with systems you did not control (inventory tools, ticketing systems, vendor APIs) and built data models that outlive any one source
Have shipped software that runs outside a central service (host agents, site-local services, edge collectors) and kept it correct in the field, or built metr…
Have worked hands-on with data about physical assets or security controls: a hardware fleet, data center or supply chain inventory, asset custody, or the con…

Competencies an interviewer will look for

Technical skill Core
In the posting: “Security at that scale runs on data, and you'll be the engineer who owns it and the systems that produce it: component-level hardware inventory and chain of …” · “You set the architecture, agree schemas and interfaces with the teams, operators and vendors that own the sources, build the pipelines, stores and tools, and…” · “We use Claude throughout our engineering workflow and expect you to as well.”
Show it by: Names the tools, languages or systems used and how; Explains a technical choice and its trade-off.
Teamwork and collaboration Core
In the posting: “In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic.” · “We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time.” · “We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely…”
Show it by: Says what they did inside a team, not only what 'we' did; Shows how a disagreement was handled.
Ownership and accountability Core
In the posting: “You set the architecture, agree schemas and interfaces with the teams, operators and vendors that own the sources, build the pipelines, stores and tools, and…” · “Hardware inventory and chain of custody: own the component-level record of what hardware exists, where it is and who has handled it: the data model, the pipe…” · “Continuous control monitoring and posture: own the pipelines that turn check outcomes, assessment results and findings into per-control and per-site measures…”
Show it by: Takes a task from start to finish without being chased; Owns a mistake and what was changed after it.
Data and analysis Core
In the posting: “Claude is trained and served on hardware in data centers Anthropic operates and in sites partners build and run for us.” · “Security at that scale runs on data, and you'll be the engineer who owns it and the systems that produce it: component-level hardware inventory and chain of …” · “You'll work with the rest of DCSE, including the engineers on its security monitoring platform, with Anthropic's compute and data center operations teams, an…”
Show it by: Uses a number to describe the situation or the result; Explains what the data showed and what was done with it.
Attention to detail and quality Core
In the posting: “We favor simple, standard controls and tools that can be verified over elaborate ones.” · “Continuous control monitoring and posture: own the pipelines that turn check outcomes, assessment results and findings into per-control and per-site measures…” · “Data quality: build coverage checks, reconciliation against sources and alerts on a silent or drifting feed, so a wrong or missing record is caught the same …”
Show it by: Gives an example of an error caught before it caused harm; Names the check or standard they used.
Stakeholder management Core
In the posting: “Claude is trained and served on hardware in data centers Anthropic operates and in sites partners build and run for us.” · “DCSE secures that footprint: the sites, the hardware moving through them, and the people and vendors who touch it.” · “You set the architecture, agree schemas and interfaces with the teams, operators and vendors that own the sources, build the pipelines, stores and tools, and…”
Show it by: Shows how they aligned people with different goals; Explains how they handled a 'no' from someone senior.
Communication Core
In the posting: “If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.” · “As such, we greatly value communication skills.”
Show it by: Adapts the message to the listener; Gives an example of explaining something clearly in writing or speech.
Leadership and mentoring Supporting
In the posting: “Integration and reporting: agree schemas and interfaces with the engineers who run the security monitoring platform, and build the query surfaces and reports…”
Show it by: Describes setting direction or a standard others followed; Names someone they coached and what changed for them.
Adaptability and learning Supporting
In the posting: “We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely…”
Show it by: Describes learning something new quickly and using it; Shows a change of plan and how they adjusted.

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Practice questions

Tell me about yourself. Dedicated step-by-step practice.
If an interviewer asks something improper How to respond to questions about age, family, origin or health.
Built from this posting (8):
Walk me through a piece of work where you used your strongest technical skill. What exactly did you do? From this posting
Describe a time you worked with another team to deliver something. What was your part? From this posting
Tell me about a task you took from start to finish without anyone asking you to. From this posting
Tell me about a time you used data or numbers to make a decision. From this posting
How have you used training in your work? Walk me through one real example. From this posting
Tell me about a problem you solved using inventory. From this posting
Tell me about a time you helped someone on your team get better at their work. From this posting
Describe a time your plans changed suddenly. How did you adjust? From this posting
You find that the inventory count does not match the system. What do you do?
Tell me about a time a shipment or delivery went wrong.
Tell me about a sale or agreement you are proud of.
Walk me through how you would check whether a report's numbers are right.
Describe a time you handled an upset customer or colleague.
Tell me about a time you had several deadlines at once. How did you decide what to do first?
Give an example of a mistake you caught before it caused a problem.
Tell me about a time you taught someone how to do something.
Describe a time you took the lead without being asked.
Tell me about a time you had to explain something complicated in simple terms.
Describe a process you improved.
Do you have any questions for us?
Why do you want to work here?
Why is there a gap in your employment? Difficult question
Why did you leave your last job? Difficult question
Why are you changing careers? Difficult question
What is your greatest weakness? Difficult question
What are your salary expectations? Difficult question
You seem overqualified for this role. Why do you want it? Difficult question
Improper-question practice: How old are you? / Do you have children? / Where are you from originally?
A customer is angry about a delay you did not cause. What do you do?
How do you keep track of many open customer requests?
Tell me about a time you could not give a customer what they wanted.
How do you make sure safety rules are followed on a busy shift?
Two managers ask you to book the same room at the same time. What do you do?
How have you used spreadsheets in your work?
Tell me about a time you had to enter or check a lot of data accurately.
A prospect says your price is too high. How do you respond?
How do you keep your pipeline organised?
Tell me about a technical problem you solved on your own.
You find a bug right before a release. What do you do?