Software Engineer, Agent SDK - Claude Code

Position Overview

The Claude Agent SDK is the foundational layer that powers autonomous AI agents — giving developers access to the same tools, agent loop, and context management that power Claude Code, programmable in Python and TypeScript. We're looking for a Software Engineer to own and lead the Agent SDK. This is a high-ownership, high-autonomy role: you'll set the technical direction for the SDK, be opinionated about its API design and developer experience, and be the connective tissue between internal teams building next-generation experiences and external developers building production agents on top of Claude.

Responsibilities

• Own the roadmap and technical direction for the Claude Agent SDK (Python and TypeScript)
• Design clean, intuitive APIs that make it easy to build powerful, reliable agents
• Partner closely with internal teams building on Agent SDK — including Claude Desktop, Cowork, and IDE extensions — to understand their needs and prioritize accordingly
• Engage directly with external developers to understand how they're using the SDK, where they're hitting friction, and what unlocks the next generation of use cases
• Raise the quality bar on documentation, examples, and the overall developer experience
• Collaborate with other Claude Code engineers to expose new model capabilities through clean SDK abstractions

Requirements & Skills

• Have strong opinions about what great developer tools look like, grounded in experience building or using them
• Are energized by owning something end-to-end, from API design through docs through developer adoption
• Have experience designing and shipping developer-facing SDKs or APIs, and have felt the difference between an SDK that developers love and one they merely tolerate
• Are excited about the frontier of agentic AI — agents that can reason, plan, and act autonomously
• Have hands-on experience with agentic patterns: tool use, orchestration, context management, multi-step reasoning
• Can operate independently in ambiguous environments and push projects forward without waiting for direction
• Care about the societal implications of the technology you build
• Have 5+ years of software engineering experience

Strong candidates may also have:

• Maintained a project built on the Claude Agent SDK
• Experience managing an open source project on GitHub — triaging issues, prioritizing what to take on and engaging with community contributors
• Experience scaling TypeScript or Python library codebases
• Shipped SDKs or APIs used by external developers in production
• Opinions about API versioning, backwards compatibility, and managing ecosystem migrations