About Handshake
Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50), and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.
Why join Handshake now:
Shape how every career evolves in the AI economy, at global scale, with impact your friends, family and peers can see and feel
Work hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions
Join a team with leadership from Scale AI, Meta, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, among others
Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue
About the Role
As Senior Software Engineer on the Allocation and Onboarding (A&O) team, you have the opportunity to own the full stack of impact—from the experiences our fellows rely on every day to the foundational systems that make those experiences possible. Sitting at the intersection of product engineering and operational scale, you'll partner closely with Growth, Product, Operations, ML, and Platform Infrastructure to translate rapidly evolving business needs into intuitive, high-quality product experiences and reliable, scalable platform capabilities.
As AI continues to reshape how people learn, work, and build careers, you'll help define the consumer experience that sets our fellows up for success while building the flexible technical foundations that enable the business to evolve just as quickly. Whether you're shipping customer-facing features, modernizing core infrastructure, or designing resilient architectures, your work will have a direct and lasting impact on both our users and our ability to innovate at scale.
This is a highly collaborative, high-impact role that requires deep partnership across engineering and business teams. Success requires strong technical fundamentals, systems thinking, and excellent communication, along with the judgment to balance rapid execution with thoughtful long-term engineering decisions. We're looking for engineers who are excited to take ownership of meaningful problems, influence technical direction, and help shape not just what we build, but how we build it.
In this role, you will:
Build and own core experiences across the fellow platform, including onboarding, fellow homepage, project opportunities, Design and build \ systems to power fellow allocation, helping evolve manual operational workflows into scalable platform capabilities.
Partner closely with Growth, Operations, Product, and ML to understand business processes and translate them into high-quality technical solutions.
Lead projects end-to-end, from technical design and implementation through rollout and continuous iteration.
Drive architectural improvements that reduce technical debt and establish scalable service layers as the platform continues to grow.
Balance speed and quality by making thoughtful engineering tradeoffs that support both immediate business needs and long-term maintainability.
Collaborate across teams to build reliable, secure systems that improve both the fellow and operator experience.
Mentor other engineers through technical leadership, project ownership, and strong engineering practices.
Desired Capabilities
6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of owning production systems end-to-end.
Experience leading technical projects involving multiple contributors, including coordinating work and driving successful execution.
Strong proactive communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to translate ambiguous or urgent business needs into effective technical solutions.
Excellent engineering judgment and systems thinking, with experience designing scalable architectures while making pragmatic tradeoffs.
Experience improving or modernizing existing systems, balancing rapid product development with long-term platform health.
Comfortable operating in fast-moving, ambiguous environments where priorities evolve quickly.
Passion for building products that directly impact customer experience at scale.
Extra Credit
Experience building marketplace, allocation, matching, or workflow systems.
Experience with AI-workflows and agentic infrastructure.
Experience designing service-oriented architectures or platform infrastructure that enables future product growth.
The ideal candidate has experience building complex systems at scale and is excited to apply that expertise in an AI-driven, rapidly evolving product landscape.
Perks
Handshake delivers benefits that help you feel supported—and thrive at work and in life.
The below benefits are for full-time US employees.
🎯 Ownership: Equity in a fast-growing company
💰 Financial Wellness: 401(k) match, competitive compensation, financial coaching
🍼 Family Support: Paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching
💝 Wellbeing: Medical, dental, and vision, mental health support, wellness stipend
📚 Growth: Learning stipend, ongoing development
💻 Remote & Office: Internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office
🏝 Time Off: Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days
🤝 Connection: Team outings & referral bonuses
Explore our mission, values, and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.
Skills Required
- 6+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Track record of owning production systems end-to-end
- Experience leading technical projects with multiple contributors
- Strong proactive communication and stakeholder management skills
- Excellent engineering judgment and systems thinking; designing scalable architectures
- Experience improving or modernizing existing systems while balancing product speed and platform health
- Comfortable operating in fast-moving, ambiguous environments with evolving priorities
- Experience mentoring and providing technical leadership to other engineers
- Passion for building customer-facing products at scale
- Experience building marketplace, allocation, matching, or workflow systems
- Experience with AI-workflows and agentic infrastructure
- Experience designing service-oriented architectures or platform infrastructure
- Experience building complex systems at scale
Handshake Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Handshake and has not been reviewed or approved by Handshake.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time-off practices include flexible/unlimited PTO, companywide recharge weeks in summer and winter, plus additional volunteer and personal holiday time. Feedback suggests sabbaticals and coordinated breaks help people actually use rest time.
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Parental & Family Support — Parental leave is described as extended for primary and secondary caregivers, and family-oriented policies are highlighted. Fertility and family-support resources are referenced in public materials.
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Healthcare Strength — Core coverage spans medical, dental, and vision, with added mental-health resources and wellness programming. Feedback suggests these supports contribute meaningfully to overall wellbeing.
Handshake Insights
What We Do
Handshake is the #1 place to launch a career with no connections, experience, or luck required. The platform connects up-and-coming talent with 650,000+ employers - from Fortune 500 companies like Google, Nike, and Target to thousands of public school districts, healthcare systems, and nonprofits. Earlier this year, we announced our $200M Series F funding round. This Series F fundraise and new valuation of $3.5B will fuel Handshake’s next phase of growth and propel our mission to help more people start, restart, and jumpstart their careers.
Why Work With Us
How someone builds their career is foundational. We believe in working with the higher education community to help students build meaningful careers. We are at the nexus of universities, students and employers— and we’re able to connect the very best pieces of each side. We’re proud to create a community where students can be more successful.
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