Senior Optimization Engineer

At Instabase, we're passionate about democratizing access to cutting-edge AI innovation to enable any organization to solve previously unsolvable unstructured data problems in their industry.  With customers representing some of the largest and most complex organizations in the world, and investors like Greylock, Andreessen Horowitz, and Index Ventures, our market opportunity is near infinite. Instabase offers a consumption-based pricing model where customers can pay only for what they use, aligning directly with the value our products deliver. It empowers our clients to explore our AI Hub platform features extensively, enabling them to uncover crucial business insights. This customer-centric model allows Instabase to glean insights from diverse use cases and behaviors, ensuring we deliver top-tier solutions that provide unmatched advantages for everyday business operations. With offices in San Francisco and Bengaluru, Instabase is a truly global company. We are people-first, and we've built a fearlessly experimental, endlessly curious, customer obsessed team who work together and help organizations around the world turn their unstructured data into insights instantly. ABOUT INSTABASE & SUPERAPP Instabase is on a mission to democratize access to cutting-edge AI innovation, enabling organizations to solve previously unsolvable unstructured data problems. SuperApp is our flagship AI agent workspace. It unifies communication, collaboration, file sharing, and multimodal reasoning into a single, seamless platform. Powering SuperApp is our Agent Harness—the underlying execution engine that manages agent states, orchestrates multi-turn planning and tool execution, enforces strict security guardrails, and runs untrusted, dynamic code in secure, sandboxed environments. As a Staff AI Engineer on the Agent Harness team, you will design the foundation of this runtime execution environment, enabling SuperApp to act as a resilient, highly scalable, and ultra-secure agentic operating system for the enterprise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROLE OVERVIEW We are seeking a visionary systems-minded AI engineer to lead the design, architecture, and development of the Agent Harness. In this role, you will bridge the gap between advanced foundation models (LLMs) and reliable, production-grade execution. You will not just be "vibe coding" prompts ; you will build the actual state machine, execution sandbox, tool-calling middleware, and security containment layers that allow AI agents to safely execute code, search the web, manipulate files, and query databases in real-time. This is a high-leverage role requiring deep expertise in distributed backend systems, runtime isolation, and stateful agent choreography.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT YOU’LL DO (RESPONSIBILITIES) * Harness Architecture & State Management: Architect the next-generation execution runtime (Agent Harness) that drives SuperApp’s planning, reasoning, memory retention, and tool-execution loops. Build reliable state machines capable of pausing, resuming, and versioning agent trajectories. * Secure Sandbox Execution: Design and scale highly secure, isolated, and ephemeral environments (using Docker, gVisor, WebAssembly, or microVMs) to execute agent-generated code safely without putting host infrastructure at risk. * Tool & Integration Frameworks: Build and maintain high-throughput APIs and integration layers (such as the Model Context Protocol - MCP) that connect SuperApp to external services, databases, web search utilities, and complex file processors. * Security & Guardrail Engineering: Engineer robust system-level guardrails to detect and mitigate prompt injection, defend against jailbreak attempts, and ensure strict compliance with system prompt instructions and data isolation boundaries. * Performance & Context Optimization: Implement advanced routing, context window pruning, and context caching strategies to optimize LLM token usage, minimize round-trip latencies, and drastically reduce the operational cost of complex agent loops. * Technical Strategy & Mentorship: Write comprehensive high-level design documents, align cross-functional engineering teams on the technical roadmap, and mentor senior and mid-level software engineers across the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT YOU * Experience: Minimum 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of designing, scaling, and operating mission-critical distributed systems. * Agentic AI Expertise: 2+ years of production experience building or modifying agent execution environments, LLM orchestrators, or tool-calling frameworks (e.g., custom runtimes, LangChain, AutoGen, or similar systems). * Backend Mastery: Expert proficiency in Go and Python. You have a pragmatic, deep understanding of concurrent programming, microservices, gRPC, and highly scalable API design. * Runtime Isolation & Security: Strong experience with containerization and virtualization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) and a solid grasp of sandboxing untrusted code execution. * Distributed Systems Fundamentals: Deep familiarity with message brokers (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ), caching infrastructure (Redis), and relational/non-relational database design. * Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, engineering, or equivalent practical systems engineering experience. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NICE TO HAVE (PREFERRED) * Prior experience developing developer tools, SDKs, or extensible plug-in architectures. * Experience with frontend integration (React, TypeScript) to support human-in-the-loop debugging interfaces or agent visual builders. * Experience working in high-growth, fast-paced startup environments. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Compensation: The base salary range for this role is $230,00 to $315,000 + bonus, equity, and  [https://instabase.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2023-Instabase-Benefits-Guide-%E2%80%94-US.pdf]benefits. The actual pay may vary based on factors such as location, experience, and skills. US Benefits: * Flexible PTO: Because life is better when you actually live it! * Comprehensive Coverage: Top-notch medical, dental, and vision insurance. * 401(k) with Matching: We’ve got your back for a secure future. * Parental Leave & Fertility Benefits: Supporting you in growing your family, your way. * Therapy Sessions Covered: Mental health matters— 10 free sessions through Samata Health. * Wellness Stipend: For gym memberships, fitness tech, or whatever keeps you thriving. * Lunch on Us: Enjoy a lunch credit when you're in the office. #Li-Hybrid Instabase is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status. Research shows that in order to apply for a job, women feel they need to meet 100% of the criteria while men usually apply after meeting about 60%. Regardless of how you identify, if you believe you can do the job and are a good match, we encourage you to apply.

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 Anthropic's Finance Systems team builds and owns the infrastructure that powers our financial operations and drives the initiatives that scale the Finance function as the company grows. As our financial operations grow in complexity, the team is moving beyond configuring off-the-shelf platforms and into building the production-grade financial applications that no vendor has built for us yet. You will own three things end to end: * The architecture: design the treasury technology platform and data foundation, make the sequencing and build-vs-buy calls, and get the foundation right so we don't rebuild it in two years. * The automation: turn Treasury's daily and monthly operating processes (cash positioning, cash flash reporting, forecasting, bank account management, payments) into tested, Claude-powered workflows that a lean team can run. * The ecosystem: figure out how treasury technology plugs into the broader Finance data lake, the ERP, our banks, and vendor systems, so treasury is a well-governed node in the company's data architecture and ecosystems rather than an island on its own. You will be the bridge between the Treasury business owners and Finance Systems engineering, turning operational needs into a clear plan and driving it through to production. This is a foundational leadership role with significant ownership over architecture, vendor, and tooling decisions. You will shape how Anthropic sees and forecasts its cash, with room to grow the team and your scope as the function matures. IN THIS ROLE YOU WILL: Architect the platform * Define the target-state architecture for treasury technology: the data foundation, the applications that sit on top of it, and how they connect * Design the treasury data foundation (models, tables, pipelines, governance) as the single source of truth for banking, cash, payments, and investment data * Lead the treasury management system build-vs-buy evaluation and own the resulting path - vendor selection and implementation, or the internal build * Sequence the multi-year roadmap so foundational work lands before the capabilities that depend on it, with minimal throwaway work Automate key treasury processes * Own the product roadmap for daily cash positioning, cash and liquidity forecasting, cash flash and leadership reporting, bank account management, treasury intake, and payment workflows * Design and ship Claude-powered agents and dashboards that automate manual, error-prone treasury work, so a lean team can operate at scale * Partner with Treasury operators to turn their processes into clear product specs, success criteria, and delivery plans, then drive them through to production * Ensure everything we ship is auditable, controlled, and recoverable, with the rigor that SOX compliance demands as scope grows into controlled processes Define the ecosystem * Align treasury data models and governance with the broader Finance data lake strategy so what we build now plugs in rather than gets rebuilt * Map and own the integration surface across banks, bank connectivity providers, TMS, ERP, and internal finance systems * Drive the technology agenda with our banking partners, TMS vendors, and connectivity providers tracking their technology roadmaps and partnering on emerging capabilities; partner internally with Accounting, FP&A, Internal Audit, and Data Engineering so treasury systems fit the company's control environment and architecture  * Run the function; set direction for and unblock one to two finance systems engineers; review technical designs YOU MAY BE A GOOD FIT IF YOU: * Have 10+ years of experience in product management, technical program management, or systems leadership in finance, treasury, or fintech * Have deep treasury domain knowledge, including cash positioning, liquidity forecasting, bank connectivity, cash pooling structures , or payment workflows * Have owned the architecture and platform decisions for an internal finance or data platform across multiple systems and vendors * Have a track record of shipping internal platforms or finance systems with an engineering team * Have led complex system design and infrastructure programs, and are comfortable owning architecture and platform decisions across multiple systems and vendors * Have led a system implementation (TMS, ERP module, or similar) or a material internal build from design through go-live * Are a strong stakeholder manager across Treasury, Finance, Engineering, Internal Audit (Risk and Compliance)and external vendors * Communicate clearly in writing and in the room, and can run a steering meeting or land a one-pager with executives * Thrive in environments where the roadmap, the systems, and the team all need to be built at the same time STRONG CANDIDATES MAY ALSO HAVE: * Direct experience with treasury management systems such as Kyriba, Quantum, Trovata, or similar as owner, administrator, or implementer * Experience integrating with banking APIs, payment rails, or bank connectivity providers * Experience with cash pooling structures, intercompany funding, or multi-entity treasury operations * Experience designing or overseeing finance data infrastructure (GCP/BigQuery or a comparable data warehouses, pipelines, reporting platforms) at a program level * Experience at a high-growth technology company navigating rapid revenue expansion or system consolidation * Built or product-managed AI/LLM-assisted workflows, agents, or Claude-powered automation for financial operations * A CTP, CFA, or comparable treasury/finance credential is a nice to have 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: $270,000—$315,000 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 [http://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 [https://www.anthropic.com/candidate-ai-guidance] for using AI in our application process.