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 Role
We’re hiring a Software Engineer to join our Quality team. The team builds the systems that define, select, and enforce quality standards across the data and evaluations we deliver to leading AI labs.
You’ll work on infrastructure that evaluates complex outputs submitted by fellows, such as coding tasks designed to challenge advanced AI models. These quality checks run throughout the production process: providing real-time feedback to fellows, supporting internal operators, and validating outputs before they reach customers.
Location: San Francisco, CA. This is an in-office role five days per week.
What You’ll Do
Build and scale backend systems that evaluate and improve the quality of data delivered to frontier AI labs
Develop infrastructure for running quality checks in real time and before final customer delivery
Help design recommendation systems that select the most effective quality checks for each project
Build data pipelines and measurement systems that make complex, subjective quality signals more observable and actionable
Develop APIs and platform capabilities that allow other teams and tools to use the Quality platform
Help surface Quality capabilities through MCP and other AI-native interfaces used by internal operators
Partner with engineers, researchers, product teams, and operations stakeholders to turn ambiguous quality problems into scalable technical solutions
Improve the reliability, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of quality workflows as the business grows
Desired Capabilities
2+ years of experience building and maintaining backend applications, services, or data-intensive systems
Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, testing, debugging, and operational reliability
A data-oriented approach to solving problems and measuring whether a system is working
Experience working with APIs, databases, data pipelines, or distributed systems
The ability to navigate ambiguous problems, break them into manageable pieces, and deliver iteratively
Strong communication and collaboration skills across technical and non-technical teams
A quality-focused mindset and an interest in building systems that make difficult-to-measure outcomes more rigorous
Extra Credit
Experience with machine learning, applied AI, or AI-enabled products
Familiarity with model evaluation, experimentation, recommendation systems, or ranking systems
Experience with annotation, data-labeling, tasking, or workflow-orchestration platforms
Experience building developer platforms, internal tools, or extensible APIs
Familiarity with MCP, agentic systems, or AI-native development tools
Experience working in a fast-moving startup or similarly ambiguous environment
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.