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Anthropic Interview Experiences
3935 interview stories from candidates at 857 companies: how each round went, what was asked and how it ended. Every company page links to practice questions in the same style.
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31 results
- A Compilation on Culture, Practical Coding, and TimelinesAnthropic · Software Engineer · Onsite · Oct 2026
A clarification: this is a compilation, not my own interview experience. The content comes from public interview reports on this forum, Blind, Glassdoor, and Interviewing. It took me quite a long time to organize. Anyone who's interviewed there is welcome to add information or corrections. There's a forum compilation of 25 posts with a very complete question list, so I won't repeat the questions…
- A Recruiter Screen and Nonnegotiable Offer TermsAnthropic · Data Scientist · HR Screen · Sep 2026In progress
I applied online among lots of other applications, then only heard from a recruiter a month later. When I went back to look for the job description, the posting was already down... I asked her for the job description, but she didn't send it either. There were also more questions than in a typical recruiter round. Why Anthropic? Why are you a good fit? Why leave your current company? Why AI compan…
- Messaging at 100 Million DAU and Gaps in My DesignAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2026Rejected
The question was to design a simple text-messaging app, with a fairly clear scope: Only conversations between two people, no group chats. Text only, no images or videos. Web clients only, with no mobile push notifications to consider. 100 million DAU. Keep messages when the recipient is offline so they can be read after the recipient comes back online. The interviewer asked me to share my entire…
- A Half-Hour Recruiter Screen on AI SafetyAnthropic · Software Engineer · Senior+ · HR Screen · Aug 2026In progress
I received an outreach email from a recruiter in August. I originally thought we would just chat briefly and then move forward to schedule the later interviews, but we ended up talking for about half an hour. The recruiter asked quite a few questions, including: "Why Anthropic?" "How does your previous experience relate to AI safety?" "Why do you think you are a fit for this position?" "How large…
- A Recruiter Screen About Level, Motivation, and AvailabilityAnthropic · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Aug 2026In progress
The recruiter asked what level of position I was looking for. I was a little distracted at the beginning and misheard the question, thinking I was being asked about my current position at my company. The other questions were why I wanted to join Anthropic and when I would be available to begin interviewing. The rest of the call was an introduction to the interview process. I was told that a coord…
- A Rescheduled Telemetry Design Interview and Naming VariantsAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026Rejected
I'd spent a long time looking through interview reports and hadn't found anyone saying what the Data Infra system-design interview actually covered. I recently did it, so here's my experience. Getting this interview scheduled was rough. It was originally set for a Wednesday. On Tuesday evening, HR said my experience looked more data-related, so they'd have me do Data Infra system design instead o…
- A Serious 20-Minute AI Safety HR ScreenAnthropic · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Aug 2026In progress
A former colleague referred me earlier, and recently a recruiter called me for an HR screen. The recruiter did not smile at all and gave no introduction. The first thing I was asked was: why Anthropic? Then came several more questions: Was there anything in a recent Anthropic interview, article, or news story that I agreed or disagreed with? Why was AI safety important to me? Had I genuinely prac…
- AI Safety Questions Before a Phone-Interview InvitationAnthropic · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Aug 2026In progress
After applying to more than a dozen roles, HR finally contacted me. They asked a lot of questions about AI safety and security. How is Anthropic different from other AI labs? What does AI safety mean to you? What will happen if AI is not properly used? Have you followed Anthropic's recent moves? What did we do right or wrong? Why do you want to work at Anthropic? What do you think are the biggest…
- Call Stack Sampling and GPU Weight Distribution System DesignAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026In progress
I interviewed this past Thursday. The first question was: given continuous call stack samples, generate timestamped function start/end events. While I was answering, the interviewer kept pushing back with follow-up questions, including things like: How do you compute the change between adjacent call stacks using the longest common prefix? Why do end events go from inside out, while start events g…
- Reviewing and Improving Pull Requests with Claude CodeAnthropic · Software Engineer · Onsite · Aug 2026
This new question had probably been in use for a few months. I was given an online VS Code environment and a site similar to GitHub. It contained four pull requests, and I was allowed to use Claude Code. The task had two parts. First, I needed to go through every pull request, explain the problem each one solved, and comment on each one. Second, I had to choose one pull request, improve it, and u…
- Three Screens and an Onsite InvitationAnthropic · Performance / Infrastructure Software Engineer · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Aug 2026In progress
The process up to my onsite invitation was as follows. Recruiter: passed, then waited two days. Hiring manager screen: passed, then waited two days. Technical coding phone screen: passed, then waited nine days. Onsite: scheduled. The recruiter round was very formal at the beginning. They really probed why I wanted Anthropic and why I wanted to switch jobs now. After the recruiter seemed satisfied…
- A Community-Compiled Guide to the OA, Technical, and Values RoundsAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
Anthropic's SWE interview process breaks into three main parts: an online assessment (OA), one to two technical interviews, and a values/culture interview. This guide compiles experiences and community info from multiple candidates, in the hope that it helps people who are preparing. Timeline The whole process moves pretty slowly. Multiple candidates report gaps of 2-3 weeks between rounds. A typ…
- HR Screen Loaded with AI Safety and Personal Morals QuestionsAnthropic · Software Engineer · Senior+ · HR Screen · Jul 2026In progress
Just finished my HR call with Anthropic. It was a referral from a colleague, but honestly my background doesn't match the JD that well, so overall I got the sense she hadn't decided yet whether to move me on to the technical interview. The official line was that they'd decide in one or two days. She asked me a bunch of questions: What does the team do You said you're a tech lead — what does your…
- Perfect OA, Rejected at the ML Inference System Design Phone ScreenAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026Rejected
I bugged a former coworker for a referral, and then got rejected right at the phone screen. The round was a system design interview, a classic ML inference design question. I felt okay about it after the interview and don't know why I got rejected. There were a few points where I think I either matched what the interviewer wanted, or was way off. The interviewer gave basically no real-time feedba…
- Pool Hire to Team Match, Onsite, Now at Reference CheckAnthropic · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jul 2026In progress
Two working days after my referral, a recruiter contacted me. I interviewed for a senior SWE role. Step one was the OA. The problem was a bank system. I had prepared for it ahead of time, so I just had the answer memorized, and I got a perfect score. I heard it's best to get a perfect score. Recruiter call: they ask why Anthropic and what you think about AI safety. Phone screen coding: cat image…
- Rejected After a Weak System Design RoundAnthropic · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2026Rejected
Phone screen: a file. Onsite: Coding: image processing. System design: prompt playground. This round was probably my weakest performance — I hadn't crammed on enough interview experiences beforehand, and I hadn't written much down in my own doc. On one or two questions I walked right into the interviewer's trap. Pay attention to some low-level details here — that's also something I hadn't taken v…
- Technical Screen on Designing a P2P Model DownloaderAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026In progress
The question was about downloading a model. It went so-so, even though the question itself was actually the simplest version of it. The main issue was that download and upload shared a 10Gbps bandwidth cap — not sure if the interviewer just picked that number randomly. The main problem was that early on I spent a lot of time performing — working through and explaining the optimal algorithm. I'd a…
- Two-Day Onsite With System Design, Project Deep Dive, and CultureAnthropic · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2026
Process Recruiter call. Phone screen (coding) — a question that had already shown up on this forum. Phone screen with the hiring manager — again, a question already posted here. Onsite: four rounds. Onsite Day one: two system design rounds, both domain specific, not much reference value since they're not the kind of thing that gets asked repeatedly on this forum. Day two: project dive deep + cult…
- Full Onsite Loop, Rejected at the HM RoundAnthropic · Software Engineer · Onsite · Apr 2026Rejected
It's a bit of a shame — I ended up getting rejected at the HM round. I think I went through a relatively new process: complete the full interview loop first, then do team match afterward. Phone Screen The question was File Deduplication. The whole conversation went smoothly and I didn't feel like there were any obvious issues. About an hour after the interview ended, I got notified that a Virtual…
- Rejected After the HR Motivation QuestionAnthropic · Software Engineer · Senior+ · HR Screen · Apr 2026Rejected
My process ended at the HR interview before I reached any technical interview. The recruiter asked why I wanted to choose Anthropic. After I answered, the recruiter's expression looked noncommittal. Sure enough, I received a rejection a few days later. I have ten years of experience and was interviewing for a technical role, so I was really frustrated that a poor answer to "Why Anthropic?" was en…
- Distributed Coding, AI Safety, and Hardware ReasoningAnthropic · Software Engineer · Onsite · Mar 2026Rejected
The author describes four interviews for an infrastructure-oriented Anthropic role. Distributed coding covered mode and median computation using supplied messaging interfaces, with attention to partitioning and communication costs. A separate programming exercise converted sampled call stacks into function events and explored recursion and limited recent-history data. The culture discussion consi…
- OA, a Python LRU Cache Phone Screen, and Rejection After a Full OnsiteAnthropic · Software Engineer · Onsite · Mar 2026Rejected
Posting my Anthropic interview from a while back. I felt like I nailed everything. The culture round and the hiring manager round also went okay. In the end I still didn't pass. It feels way too arbitrary. (Maybe my background just wasn't a great match — I was interviewing for a billing platform team, but I've never worked on payments.) OA - recipe manager Phone screen - coding Q2 - LRU cache, th…
- Onsite Loop with a 1-on-1 Chat System Design, File Dedup Coding, and a Culture Round I Couldn't ReadAnthropic · Software Engineer · Onsite · Mar 2026In progress
The phone screen was Q1 image processing — using PIL to do grayscale, scale, and resize. The first step handled small images, the second step handled large images, and improving performance meant using ProcessPoolExecutor. The recruiter had mentioned beforehand that I should be comfortable with parallelism/concurrency, which was basically a hint. Time was a bit tight and the interviewer had to nu…
- Referral, Product-Focused System Design and an $850k OfferAnthropic · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Mar 2026Offer
A while back I landed a software engineer offer at Anthropic. Total compensation comes to about $850k USD. During prep I studied from online material and also did three mock interviews. The mocks mostly helped me feel steadier about system design, although the design round I got at Anthropic looked quite different from the typical format people practice. One thing I'd pass on: people generally in…
- Forced Into Single-Threaded Code, Then RejectedAnthropic · Technical Screen · Jan 2026Rejected
I recently did a phone screen with Anthropic. I actually had a lot of goodwill toward this company going in, but the interview experience was extremely bad — I felt like the interviewer led me straight into a trap. Writing this to recap what happened, and also to ask everyone here for advice: when you run into an unprofessional interviewer during an interview, how do you save yourself? And is the…
- A Web Crawler Question Derailed by a Concurrency StumbleAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Oct 2025Rejected
Classic interview question: web crawler. You can also find this one on the usual practice-problem site. First single-threaded, then the follow-up was multi-threaded. Only need to consider pages under a single hostname. The extra piece compared to the practice-site version is that you need to handle the fragment — the #... part of the URL needs to be stripped. No need to worry about URL normalizat…
- A Surprise Extra Round, Then a Downlevel to SeniorAnthropic · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Sep 2025Offer
Overall the problems weren't hard, but there was a lot of code to write. The phone screen was one round of coding — they asked the file deduplication problem (Q2), done on Replit. The onsite (VO) had 5 rounds total — it was originally supposed to be 4, but they added one more afterward: Round 1, Coding: asked the web crawler question (Q1). The interviewer asked if I'd seen a similar problem befor…
- A Web Crawler Question That Turned Into a Late Multithreading PushAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025Rejected
Phone screen, and there's a problem on LeetCode that's almost identical to what they asked. Write a web crawler that only scrapes pages under the same hostname. The URL they gave me was for a real website (I think it might have been their CEO's blog?). The interview format was a bit different though — he didn't have me jump straight to writing multi-threaded code. You do it single-threaded first,…
- Cut in the Management Style RoundAnthropic · Engineering Manager · Senior+ · Onsite · Sep 2025Rejected
I interviewed for an L6-7 EM role, in the pretrain org. The technical rounds were: project retrospective system design There were 3 non-technical rounds: management style strategy and execution culture The project retro was the only round with an actual engineering leader from the relevant area sitting in, and I felt like that one went pretty positively — they asked some pretty sharp questions. T…
- In-Memory Banking OA, Then a Surprise LLM Classifier ScreenAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
After mass-applying online, HR reached out really fast — they basically sent the OA in the second week. The OA was pretty simple: design an in-memory banking system, four levels total. There's discussion of this question all over the forum. The first level was designing three functions: add account, pay, and deposit. The logic was simple — just define a dict to track accounts and balances. The se…
