Anthropic’s Interview Process & Questions

The info below is based on conversations with Anthropic engineers.

Anthropic's Interview Process for Software Engineers: 4 Steps

Mid to senior-level engineers interviewing at Anthropic can expect the following process:

• Recruiter call (30 minutes)
• Coding challenge (60-90 mins)
• Hiring Manager call (1 hour)
• Onsite (4 hours)

At Anthropic, you interview for one of their two orgs: Research or Applied. Your interviewers will all come from that org. There is likely some flexibility in terms of which team in that org you end up on.

General tips:

• Brush up on system design
• Though Anthropic’s coding questions are algorithmic, they tend to be more practical than the verbatim LeetCode questions that many companies use
• Use a larger monitor for your coding Challenge – time is of the essence, and a laptop has limited real estate to view and write code
• They don’t give exploding offers and are very patient through the process
• They use Python, and you’ll need to be comfortable with it

The entire process takes about 3-4 weeks, and we’ve heard it’s very well thought out. From one of our users who recently interviewed with Anthropic:

This felt so easy and thoughtful compared to all the other companies I interviewed with. They have their shit together. Efficient, thoughtful, won’t waste your time. They move faster than expected!

AI Usage

AI use in Anthropic interviews is strictly prohibited. They have laid out clear guidelines for when AI is allowed during the entire hiring process, and it’s not permitted at all in live interviews, unless they explicitly say otherwise.

Step 1: Recruiter Call

Anthropic’s recruiter call lasts 30 minutes, and it’s pretty standard fare – they’ll ask you about your previous experience, why you’re interested in Anthropic, your understanding of Anthropic’s value proposition, and what you’re looking for moving forward. They’ll also explain that they are a B Corp and cover what that means.

It’s really important, at this stage, to not reveal your salary expectations or where you are in the process with other companies. We’ve written a detailed post about salary negotiation that lays out exactly what to say if recruiters pressure you to name the first number.

Step 2: Coding Challenge

We’ve heard that this can be done live or asynchronously. Most of the people we spoke to took a 90-minute take-home assessment in CodeSignal, but Anthropic's website says you might get a 60-minute live assessment, so it seems to be role-dependent. It won’t be a LeetCode-style problem, but will still be pretty straightforward. You will be asked to complete a task that gets progressively more complex. One challenge we heard about was to implement a bank with multiple transaction types. You would have to build the core business logic for the application. We’ve heard that candidates tend to run out of time in this round, so manage your time carefully.

One engineer who took the take-home assessment told us that:

The screening was conducted on Code Signal, consisting of a general specification and a black-box evaluator. There were four levels. The spec would get more complicated at each level, and your code had to pass all the tests at one level to get to the next level. All in two hours.

The verbal spec was straightforward. No special algorithmic knowledge was needed. But the spec interpretation could only be obtained by repeatedly running your code to see what test cases failed.

Makes me think the folks who go to the next level are probably good at reading ambiguous specs and trying out theories against black-box graders.

Step 3: Hiring Manager Call

This is mostly a technical call and is usually split into two parts. You will be asked to talk about (1) a project you’ve completed and (2) review code examples in different programming languages. You’ll be asked to detect issues and recognize what task the code is used for.

Step 4: Onsite

This will vary slightly by role but here’s what you can expect.

• Coding (1 hour). This interview will be conducted in CodeSignal. For more detail about the kinds of questions to expect, see the Coding section below.
• System design (1 hour). This interview will be conducted in the drawing tool of your choice. For more detail about the kinds of questions to expect, see the System Design section below.
• Second coding (role-specific)(1 hour). For more detail about the kinds of questions to expect, see the Coding section below.
• Behavioral (1 hour). For more info about what questions to expect, see the Behavioral section below.

Types of Interview Questions to Expect at Anthropic

Coding

This will likely be algorithms and data structures-focused but will skew more practical than typical LeetCode questions. A sample question we heard was about iterating over and debugging a call stack.

Most coding rounds are carried out in a shared Python environment, so you’ll need to be comfortable with the syntax and standard library. Some roles will incorporate Machine Learning elements but only in one of the coding rounds and you can pass on that if you’d like. You do not have to know anything about machine learning to interview with Anthropic as an engineer. Below are the technical topics you’re likely to encounter in Anthropic interviews. To compile this list, we did two things. First, we spoke to some current and former Anthropic engineers. Then we cross-referenced all the anecdotes we heard with Glassdoor data AND our own data-set of mock interviews.

First, here’s a list of more niche technical topics that are, in our experience, specific to Anthropic:

• Data mutation
• Concurrency

And here are technical topics that you’re likely to find at other companies as well (for these we’ve created detailed write-ups of their own):

System Design

As with the other interviews, expect something practical here. It will very likely be related to an issue that Anthropic has encountered before. You might be asked to:

• Design a system that enables a GPT to handle multiple questions in a single thread
• Design a Claude chat service
• Design a banking app

Check out our guide to system design interviews to help you prepare.

Behavioral

This will be more conversational and less traditional than you might have seen at other companies. Expect questions about AI in areas like ethics, data protection, safety, the job market and knowledge sharing.

How Anthropic Makes Hiring Decisions

Decisions are reached by consensus (everyone agrees to hire or no-hire), but in cases where consensus isn’t possible, the hiring manager has final say.