Handshake was founded on a simple belief that everyone deserves a path to a great career, regardless of where they went to school or who they know. Today, we power 25 million job seekers, 1 million+ employers, and 1,600 educational institutions.
In 2025, we started Handshake AI and built the fastest-growing AI data business in history. We work directly with frontier AI lab researchers to create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and push the boundary of data. We’ve grown from $0 to ~$1B run rate and pay ~$60M to over 30K individuals every month.
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
Partner hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions
Work together with engineers, scientists, operators, and more from Palantir, Meta, Scale AI, and former YC founders
Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue
About Handshake AI
Human data is the core infrastructure to AI advancement. Frontier AI labs currently improve model capabilities with various data-intensive post-training techniques. We believe that data spend for AI training will increase by 3-5x in the next few years and continue for much longer as models take on new domains. Handshake AI supports all of the frontier AI labs, working on their most complex data at the largest scale.
About the RoleAs a Senior Software Engineer on the Handshake AI Enterprise team, you'll own the product experience layer of AI applications we deploy directly into enterprise customer environments. You'll work closely with customers to deeply understand their workflows, translate ambiguous needs into crisp product decisions, and build end-to-end solutions that are genuinely delightful to use, not just functional.
This is not a role for engineers who treat product quality as an afterthought. We believe engineering craft is a meaningful part of what makes AI applications succeed in enterprise environments, and you'll be the person who holds that bar across every deployment.
This is a unique opportunity to pair direct customer impact with founding-team ownership, helping define what high-craft enterprise AI product looks like from the ground up.
Location: San Francisco, CA | 5 days/week in-office
What You'll Do
Own the product experience of AI applications deployed into enterprise customer environments, from initial discovery through iteration
Work directly with customers to understand their workflows, pain points, and what "great" looks like in their context
Translate ambiguous customer needs into clear, well-crafted product and technical decisions
Build high-quality, full-stack features, from data models and APIs to the interfaces people actually use
Collaborate closely with Applied AI and Platform engineers on your deployment team to ship cohesive, production-grade solutions
Iterate rapidly based on real usage and customer feedback, with tight feedback loops
Establish product engineering standards and reusable patterns that help the team scale quality as we grow
Surface insights from customer deployments that inform Handshake's core product direction
What We're Looking For
5-6+ years of product engineering experience with strong fullstack instincts and a high bar for product quality
Experience at a company where craft was a genuine priority, you've helped hold that bar, not just ship features
Proficiency across the stack: comfortable with modern backend frameworks, APIs, and data modeling, as well as React/TypeScript on the frontend
Strong opinions about product experience, you notice when things feel off and you fix them, regardless of which layer the problem lives in
Ability to make pragmatic technical decisions that serve the product, not just the architecture
Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-moving environments with real customers and real stakes
Strong communication skills, you'll be in customer conversations regularly and need to translate between business needs and technical decisions
Extra Credit
Experience building or integrating AI-powered features in production, customer-facing products
Background working in or alongside enterprise deployment environments
History of close collaboration with designers, or a background in design yourself
Experience at a company with a forward-deployed or embedded engineering model
Skills Required
- 5-6+ years of product engineering experience
- Expert-level proficiency with ReactJS
- Expert-level proficiency with TypeScript
- Strong frontend and product sensibility
- Strong communication skills
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Gallery
