Anthropic CEO says engineering jobs will end soon, but company opened 429 roles in same field

The debate around AI replacing human jobs is no longer just theoretical, it is now playing out in real time, and sometimes in contradictory ways. Over the past few months, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has repeatedly warned that engineering roles, especially those focused on coding, could fade much sooner than expected. But even as those warnings grow stronger, his own company is quietly doing something that tells a very different story -- hiring engineers in large numbers. That contrast is hard to ignore.

Amodei has not held back when speaking about the impact of AI on technical careers. Across multiple public conversations this year, he has stated that entry-level engineering roles could be among the first to be affected, as AI systems become capable of handling routine coding tasks. He has asserted that such roles will be taken over by AI and that coding roles in general are also likely to go away.

"I think coding is going away first, or coding is being done by the AI models first," he said during a recent discussion, drawing a line between writing code and the broader responsibilities of engineering.

Inside Anthropic, this change is already visible. Amodei revealed that some engineering leads no longer write code themselves, relying instead on the company's AI models to generate it. Their role, in many cases, has been reduced to reviewing and refining what the AI produces. In one instance, a tool was built in under two weeks, largely using AI-generated code -- something that would typically take much longer with traditional workflows.

He has also shared aggressive timelines for how quickly this could scale. According to him, AI could soon be writing the majority of code for many companies, potentially reaching 90 percent in the near future. "And then in 12 months, AI will essentially be writing all the codes," he said.

For Amodei, this is not a distant possibility but an ongoing change that is already changing how work gets done. He has even warned that entire job categories built over decades may not survive this transition. "There are whole jobs, whole careers that we've built for decades that may not be present," he said, adding that the scale of disruption is still underestimated.

And yet, even as these warnings continue, Anthropic's hiring activity paints a different picture. According to its official Careers site, the company currently has around 429 open roles in engineering, spanning positions such as Research Engineer, Full-Stack Software Engineer, Performance Engineer, Engineering Manager and more. There are several high-value roles, with salaries ranging between $320,000 and $405,000.

This is where the story becomes more layered than it first appears. If engineering jobs are heading towards a decline, why is one of the leading AI companies still expanding its engineering workforce?

Part of the answer lies in timing. While AI is clearly reducing the need for repetitive coding, it has not yet reached a point where it can fully replace engineers. In fact, building and improving these AI systems still requires deep technical expertise, something companies like Anthropic are actively investing in.

Amodei himself has acknowledged this transition phase. He said that even within Anthropic, the need for engineers could reduce over time as AI becomes more capable of handling end-to-end software development. "[In the future] even within Anthropic, we would need less software engineers than we have today," he said.

At the same time, he also pointed to new roles that could emerge from this change. One such example is the "forward deployed engineer" -- a professional who combines technical skills with an understanding of customer needs to help implement AI systems in real-world scenarios. "That's one possible example where one thing goes away and another door opens," he explained.

For now, the situation suggests a moment of overlap -- where the old and the new are coexisting. AI is already changing how engineering work is done, reducing the need for traditional coding in some areas. But it has not eliminated the need for engineers altogether.

As Amodei explained, even though AI is able to coding, "the programmer will still need to specify, what are the conditions of what you are doing, what is the overall app that you are trying to make, what is the overall design decision, how do we collaborate with other codes that has been written, how do we have some common sense that this is a secure design." He added that as long as these gaps exist, human programmers will continue to handle what AI isn't good at yet, even though it remains unclear what happens if AI eventually learns to manage these aspects as well.

What makes this moment interesting -- and slightly uneasy -- is the gap between what is being said and what is being done. The warnings are about a future where fewer engineers may be needed. The hiring, however, shows that in the present, they are still very much in demand.