Role Overview
The Member of Technical Staff, Data AI role at Handshake involves building advanced data systems that support frontier model training in San Francisco, CA. This position suits an experienced software engineer with a strong background in data processing, privacy, and machine learning who wants to shape the future of the AI economy.
Key Responsibilities
Design and construct systems that enhance the quality, scale, and safety of data Handshake generates and acquires for frontier model training, covering synthetic data creation and data anonymization or PII removal.
Translate ambiguous research, partner, or compliance needs into clear hypotheses, experiments, evaluation plans, and production-ready implementations.
Build and improve data-processing pipelines, evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, and quality-control systems to generate high-signal synthetic data or verify sensitive data de-identification.
Execute fast and rigorous iteration loops by prototyping, evaluating, interpreting results, and transforming learnings into durable software products.
Partner closely with researchers, domain experts, and legal or compliance teams to ensure data remains high-utility and responsibly managed.
Identify repeatable patterns across engagements and productize them into reusable software and platforms.
Raise the overall technical bar through strong design judgment, clear communication, code quality, and mentorship.
Requirements
Possess 2 to 10 years of recent, demonstrated experience in synthetic or LLM-generated data, post-training and model evaluation, privacy engineering, or large-scale data anonymization and de-identification.
Maintain a hands-on individual contributor track record, as this is not a management or team-lead position.
Demonstrate strong Python skills and the ability to write clean, efficient, and scalable software for messy, real-world datasets.
Exhibit sound judgment for reasoning about data quality, risk, and utility by forming hypotheses, choosing metrics, diagnosing failures, and separating signal from noise.
Show experience in system design, including evaluating tradeoffs regarding quality, scale, reliability, and reuse.
Display comfort working within a fast-moving, ambiguous environment with high ownership.
Communicate collaboratively and effectively with researchers, engineers, domain experts, and customers.
Nice to Have
Experience building or operating large-scale synthetic or LLM-generated data pipelines for model training.
Background in operating large-scale data de-identification systems involving relational or graph-structured data while preserving relationship integrity.
History of developing LLM or agent benchmarks, evaluation methodologies, annotation systems, or data-quality frameworks.
Research or applied experience with reinforcement learning, alignment, model behavior, synthetic data, or human-in-the-loop systems.
Prior work within regulated or high-sensitivity environments such as healthcare, finance, or government, along with re-identification risk assessment knowledge.
Published research, open-source contributions, or technical leadership evidence in machine learning systems, data engineering, or AI research.
Experience productizing research or custom customer workflows into robust platforms.
Skills and Tools
Python
LLM
Synthetic Data Generation
Data Anonymization and PII Removal
Pipeline Design
Evaluation Frameworks
Salary and Benefits
Annual salary range between $200,000 and $350,000 USD
Equity in a fast-growing company
Financial wellness support including a 401(k) match, competitive compensation, and financial coaching
Family support features such as paid parental leave, fertility benefits, and parental coaching
Wellbeing coverage including medical, dental, vision, mental health support, and a $500 wellness stipend
Growth perks including a $2,000 learning stipend and ongoing development
Office perks such as commuting support, free lunch, and an on-site gym in the San Francisco office
Flexible time off with 15 holidays and 2 flex days
Team connection activities, outings, and referral bonuses
About the Company
Handshake powers millions of job seekers, employers, and educational institutions with the belief that everyone deserves a path to a great career. In 2025, the organization launched Handshake AI to collaborate directly with frontier AI lab researchers, create evaluations, publish benchmarks, and advance data boundaries.
How to Apply
Apply directly on the official company careers page to join the Handshake team.
