Senior Software Engineer, Operator Tooling

About Handshake

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 1600 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. Weve 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 worlds 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 Role

As a Senior Software Engineer on Operating Tooling youll build internal products and automation that help Handshakes operators run the business at high quality and speed. This team functions like an embedded/consulting engineering group: youll partner directly with operators learn their workflows deeply and enable new operational capabilities.

This role is highly collaborative and communication-heavy. Success requires strong technical fundamentals plus high EQsomeone who can translate ambiguous operational needs into reliable systems and iteratively ship improvements that stick.

In this role you will:

• Embed with operators to understand processes pain points and success metrics; translate them into clear technical requirements and deliverables.

• Architect and build internal tools automations and workflows that improve operational throughput accuracy and visibility.

• Lead projects end-to-end: discovery scoping technical design implementation rollout and iteration.

• Balance speed and quality by making thoughtful tradeoffs ensuring maintainability and building with operational reliability in mind.

• Collaborate closely with cross-functional partners (operators engineering product) to drive adoption and measurable impact.

• Mentor other engineers and help establish strong engineering practices for an internal-tools environment.

Desired Capabilities

• 5 years of software engineering experience with comfort owning systems end-to-end (from requirements through production support).

• Strong communication skills and stakeholder management; able to partner deeply with non-engineering teams and operate with high empathy/EQ.

• Experience building internal tools workflow systems or automation for operations-heavy teams (or analogous customer-embedded roles like FDE / solutions engineering).

• Strong engineering judgment: can design scalable systems pick the right level of abstraction and avoid over-building.

• Track record of delivering iterative high-leverage improvements in ambiguous environments.

Extra Credit

• Experience with workflow/backlog systems intake processes and operational analytics (instrumentation dashboards QA).

• Comfort operating in a player-coach environment (mix of hands-on building plus lightweight coordination/mentorship as the team grows).

• Background building tooling for knowledge-work operations (e.g. case management review/approval flows data quality tooling).

Perks

Handshake delivers benefits that help you feel supportedand 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 Experience:

Senior IC