DeepSeek builds 'Deepseek Code' to challenge Claude Code and OpenAI Codex

DeepSeek is spinning up a new Beijing-based 'Harness' team to build an in-house coding agent, working title Deepseek Code, according to job listings posted on X by DeepSeek's Deli Chen. The product manager and developer roles target heavy users of Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and Copilot, with experience in agent loops, MCP, multi-agent systems, and context engineering required. The move follows DeepSeek's recent hire of a former Jane Street engineer to lead its agent harness work, and positions the Chinese lab squarely against Anthropic and OpenAI in the agentic coding race. The 'harness' framing, model plus tools plus planning plus memory, mirrors how Anthropic and OpenAI describe their own agent stacks.

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