Updated by Anthropic candidates
Software Engineer, Safeguards Interview Experience
The weirdest Anthropic round was the company values interview. It was almost like a therapy session, and honestly if you went to a therapist at some point, you will pass that round much more easily.
Interview process
I did a hard pre-assessment first, then the recruiter fast-tracked me because I already had other offers and got me through the rest of the loop in about a week. The onsite was five rounds for me: hiring manager, coding, company values, system design, and then another coding round. The most unusual part was the company values interview, which was run by nontechnical people and felt almost like a therapy session because they kept probing how I felt, not just what I did. The technical rounds were more practical than I expected, while the behavioral side was where I felt the real pressure. I finished the loop, but at the time of this conversation, I was still waiting on the outcome.
- Online assessment
- Recruiter screen
- Phone interview
- Technical interview
- Other
Interview rounds
13 questions across 7 roundsOnline assessment
Overview
I had to do a CodeSignal-style pre-assessment over email before I even really got into the process. I remember it being pretty hard. After the recruiter call, they were going to add another assessment, but because I had other offers they skipped that part and moved me forward fast.
Question types asked
Recruiter screen
1 questionOverview
The recruiter round itself felt standard in format, but way more useful than usual. She was very bullish on moving fast because I already had other offers, and she gave me a surprising amount of detail about the loop, basically the problem areas I should expect. She also told me pretty directly that the company values round was the one where people usually fail.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
I honestly did not give a great answer. I more or less just said I was bullish on Anthropic. She told me I would need to work on that, which was fair.
Phone interview
2 questionsOverview
The hiring manager call was basically a standard behavioral screen. He explicitly said he was looking for signals and would dive deeper if something was unclear or missing. It moved quickly, and to be honest he seemed a little unfocused and was eating during the call.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
What is your biggest project?
Technical interview (1)
1 questionOverview
The first coding round was one of the practical problems the recruiter had already hinted at. It was not very LeetCode-y. It felt more like taking profiling-style data and transforming it into something usable.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
Transform call stacks or samples into execution traces.
Other
7 questionsOverview
This was the most unique round by far. I was interviewed by nontechnical people, and one of them was shadowing, so it almost felt like a therapy session more than an engineering interview. It was not pushy, but it was intentionally personal, and I think they were testing whether I was emotionally competent and actually reflective, not just polished.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
I tried not to do the usual dream-company speech. My general posture in this process was to stay a little skeptical and not act like I already believed everything about the mission was perfect.
How were you feeling at that time?
And how do you feel about it now?
I used an example where we were cutting corners in a way that felt legally sketchy. We broke an agreement with a customer by sending data somewhere we were not actually authorized to send it. He kept pushing on how I felt then and how I feel now. I said I did not feel great about it at the time, even if it was not formally my call, and I still do not feel great about it now. It felt like he wanted me to name the discomfort instead of rationalizing it away.
I talked about helping coworkers outside the formal boundaries of my role. That question felt more intrusive than I expected because it pulls you into your social dynamics, so I was trying to control how much I gave away while still answering honestly.
I said I am not totally confident anyone can reach the level of safety they say they want, and that some of it can look like overengineering when other players are willing to cut corners. I got the sense they wanted to see whether I would push back instead of just flattering the mission.
Technical interview (2)
1 questionOverview
The system design round had a weird format. The interviewer dropped a Google Doc on me, had me share my screen, and mostly watched me work through it. I walked in expecting a normal boxes-and-arrows design round, and instead it opened with basically 'implement an API,' so the format itself threw me for a second.
Question types asked
Technical interview (3)
1 questionOverview
The second coding round was harder than the first. It centered on an LRU cache, but they added complexity in multiple waves, so it became a time-management test as much as a coding test. It still felt practical rather than like pure puzzle solving.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
How would you handle files?
What are the serialization tradeoffs?
Interview tips
I would prep the behaviorals way harder than the technicals for this one. The technical rounds were not easy, especially the LRU cache, because they keep layering complexity, but the real trap is the values round. I would have real stories ready about conflict, morally gray situations, tough feedback, and times I was wrong, and I would practice actually talking about how I felt instead of only explaining the logic. I also think it helps to be a little skeptical rather than giving them the generic 'I love your mission' answer.
Company culture
I got the sense they take interviewing really seriously. I had shadow interviewers three different times, which I almost never see, and that usually means they care a lot about calibrating interviewers. They also seemed unusually rigorous about references early in the process. Once they knew I had competing offers, they wanted references from day one, specifically a former boss at a pretty senior level and a coworker. Compared with OpenAI, which felt much more internal-referral heavy to me, Anthropic felt more focused on external references and actual background on how I work. They can move very fast when they want to, and the recruiter was unusually transparent about what I should prep.
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More Anthropic interview experiences
“I went in expecting a multithreaded DSA question, and instead they dropped me into a full project with image files where I had to Google a library on the spot. End of the day, I did not even have one image converted.”
“The main thing is that Anthropic had a very small question bank. When I was interviewing, I already knew the system design question, and the coding questions were like five of them, which was kind of wild.”
See all 7 Anthropic Software Engineer interview experiences →
