Role Overview
The Forward Deployed Engineer, Enterprise AI position at Handshake is an on-site technical role based in San Francisco, California. This opportunity suits an experienced engineer with a passion for building real-world AI applications and collaborating directly with enterprise clients.
Key Responsibilities
Embed directly with enterprise clients inside small deployment teams to master their business workflows and operational bottlenecks.
Define and deliver AI-driven solutions grounded in actual business requirements rather than theoretical use cases.
Build, deploy, and maintain production-grade AI agents tailored to distinct customer use cases with end-to-end delivery ownership.
Design and execute evaluations to gauge agent performance, continuously iterating until metric results improve.
Cultivate domain expertise within specific customer verticals to refine AI capabilities over time.
Collaborate alongside Product and Platform engineering colleagues to release reliable and cohesive solutions.
Formulate engineering best practices, agent patterns, and reusable frameworks to scale team output.
Surface critical insights from client deployments to guide the product and platform roadmap.
Requirements
Possess one to four or more years of engineering experience featuring strong backend depth and full-stack capabilities.
Bring practical, real-world experience building and shipping AI applications to production environments.
Demonstrate solid comprehension of agent architectures, evaluation methods, and systematic AI performance improvements.
Display comfort operating directly with enterprise customers in high-stakes and ambiguous settings.
Exhibit robust systems thinking to transition seamlessly between macro business problems and micro technical solutions.
Maintain high ownership regarding business outcomes rather than just technical outputs.
Communicate effectively with senior stakeholders to rapidly build trust.
Ability to work five days per week in the San Francisco, California office.
Nice to Have
Previous background working at an organization utilizing a field engineering or forward deployment model.
Prior experience developing multi-agent systems in a production environment.
Existing domain expertise in enterprise verticals such as recruiting, finance, operations, or legal.
Familiarity handling enterprise security protocols, VPC deployments, or on-premise configurations.
A documented history of building evaluation infrastructure or AI quality measurement tools.
Skills and Tools
Full-stack engineering with backend depth
AI application deployment
Agent architectures and evaluations
Systems thinking and business analysis
Enterprise customer communication
Multi-agent systems design
Security, VPC, and on-premise configurations
Salary and Benefits
Annual salary range between $155,000 and $170,000 in USD.
Equity ownership in a rapidly growing company.
Comprehensive financial wellness including a 401(k) match, competitive compensation, and financial coaching.
Family support benefits featuring paid parental leave, fertility benefits, and parental coaching.
Health and wellbeing coverage including medical, dental, vision, mental health support, and a $500 wellness stipend.
Professional growth opportunities with a $2,000 learning stipend and ongoing development.
Office perks such as free lunch, gym access, internet coverage, and commuting support in San Francisco.
Generous time off including flexible PTO, 15 holidays, and 2 flex days.
Team connection activities, team outings, and referral bonuses.
About the Company
Handshake was founded on the principle that everyone deserves access to a great career regardless of background or connections. The organization powers millions of job seekers, employers, and educational institutions worldwide. Handshake AI collaborates directly with frontier artificial intelligence lab researchers to generate evaluations, publish benchmarks, and advance data boundaries.
How to Apply
Interested candidates should visit the official company careers page at joinhandshake.com/careers to submit an application for this role.
