Anthropic is expanding beyond cloud infrastructure, and the Datacenter Server Lifecycle Engineer sits at the heart of that effort. You will guide the operational journey of every machine in our facilities — from initial provisioning and deployment, throughout its working life, all the way to decommissioning. A key aspect of this role is its deep intersection with security, ensuring every server operates with a verified chain of integrity.
What You'll Do
- Lead the build-out of automation to support datacenters containing tens of thousands of servers.
- Own and define the end-to-end machine lifecycle strategy — from provisioning and deployment through operation, maintenance, refresh, and decommissioning — and maintain automation and operational procedures for common lifecycle events.
- Partner closely with Infrastructure Security to design and enforce trusted compute standards across the machine lifecycle.
- Work closely with our Networking team to ensure end-to-end connectivity across all sites.
- Build and maintain tooling to track machine health, configuration, and operational status across the full datacenter fleet.
What We're Looking For
- 5+ years of experience in datacenter operations, hardware infrastructure management, or a closely related discipline.
- Deep, hands-on experience with server hardware — including rack deployment, cabling, troubleshooting, and understanding failure modes at scale.
- Understanding of hardware lifecycle management end-to-end: asset tracking, provisioning workflows, maintenance scheduling, and decommissioning practices.
- Strong proficiency in at least one programming language (e.g., Python, Rust, Go, or Java).
- Comfort navigating ambiguity and working independently to drive progress on complex, cross-functional problems.
- Clear communication skills and an ability to build consensus with a wide range of stakeholders.
- Working knowledge of modern cloud infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code, AWS, and GCP.
- Comfort with occasional travel to datacenter sites across North America.
Nice to Have
- Hands-on experience with GPU or AI accelerator hardware (e.g. NVIDIA A100/H100, AMD MI300, Google TPUs, or AWS Trainium) and an understanding of their operational demands.
- Familiarity with modern provisioning tooling such as coreboot, LinuxBoot, or u-root.
- Experience building or contributing to datacenter automation or fleet management platforms.
- Experience building and deploying server operating system distributions across thousands of hosts.
- A background in large-scale capacity planning and hardware refresh strategy, ideally at a hyperscaler or large cloud provider.
- Experience with trusted compute and hardware security concepts such as secure boot, TPM, hardware attestation, and firmware verification — or a strong desire to develop deep expertise in this area.
Technical Stack
- Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code, AWS, GCP
- Languages: Python, Rust, Go, Java
Team & Environment
You will join the Datacenter Machine Lifecycle team as Anthropic expands its physical infrastructure footprint. We are an extremely collaborative group working on large-scale research efforts.
Benefits & Compensation
- Competitive compensation and benefits
- Optional equity donation matching
- Generous vacation and parental leave
- Flexible working hours
- Lovely office space
- Compensation: £255,000—£325,000 GBP
Work Mode
This is a hybrid position based in North America.
Anthropic is an equal opportunity employer.
