Founding Design Engineer, AI Capability Development, Education Labs

Anthropic•San Francisco, NY

7d•$1 - $2•Hybrid

About The Position

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. 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.

Requirements

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

Nice To Haves

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
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

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