Role Overview
Handshake seeks a Staff Software Engineer for the Consumer Experience team in San Francisco, CA. This full-time position suits an experienced technologist eager to build scalable products connecting millions of students with top employers.
Key Responsibilities
Design and develop consumer-facing features that boost user engagement and simplify connections between students and employers.
Architect and scale distributed systems to support millions of active users while maintaining high availability and optimal performance.
Shape technical direction through collaboration with cross-functional partners to ensure engineering work aligns with broader business objectives.
Mentor and elevate fellow engineers to foster a culture focused on continuous growth and top-tier technical excellence.
Advocate for engineering best practices to enhance product quality and overall team efficiency.
Requirements
Bring eight or more years of professional software engineering experience showcasing a history of delivering large-scale, complex systems.
Demonstrate past performance at a staff-level scope with the ability to influence technical strategies across multiple teams.
Possess expertise in building and scaling distributed systems, ideally within consumer-facing platforms or social products.
Exhibit strong proficiency in languages such as Python, JavaScript, or Go with an emphasis on maintainable production code.
Maintain a solid grasp of modern system design principles and cloud infrastructure platforms including AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Communicate effectively with the capability to explain intricate technical concepts clearly to varied audiences.
Demonstrate experience mentoring senior engineers and driving team engineering culture.
Nice to Have
Background working with search, recommendation systems, ranking models, or personalization at scale.
Experience dealing with user identity knowledge graphs involving real-time inference and entity resolution.
Familiarity building AI-powered systems and applications utilizing large language models.
Prior employment history inside rapidly scaling or high-growth business environments.
Skills and Tools
Python
JavaScript
Go
AWS
Azure
GCP
Distributed Systems
Cloud Platforms
LLM Applications
Salary and Benefits
Annual salary range between $265,000 and $295,000 paid in USD
Company equity providing ownership in a rapidly expanding business
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision health coverage
Financial wellness tools including a 401(k) match and financial coaching
Family support benefits featuring paid parental leave, fertility benefits, and parental coaching
Wellbeing perks such as mental health support and a wellness stipend
Professional growth allowances including a learning stipend and ongoing development programs
Office perks featuring free lunch and gym access in the San Francisco office along with internet and commuting stipends
Time off policies including flexible PTO, 15 holidays, and 2 flex days
Team connection events and employee referral bonuses
About the Company
Handshake operates a massive career platform powering millions of job seekers, over one thousand employers, and numerous educational institutions. The organization recently launched Handshake AI, collaborating closely with frontier artificial intelligence labs to advance research, build data benchmarks, and scale modern machine learning infrastructure.
How to Apply
Interested candidates should visit the official company careers page at joinhandshake.com/careers to submit an application.
