Handshake - Senior Manager, Engineering
Requirements
• You’ll lead the founding team, a mix of senior, staff, principal, and mid-level engineers. The product is self-serve from day one, starting free and growing into paid and enterprise tiers. • 3+ years experience managing engineering teams, including teams that include senior and staff engineers • Strong people management: high EQ, empathy, and a record of growing engineers’ careers • Deep technical background. You can contribute to architecture and evaluate trade-offs on a new system, even if you no longer code day to day • A track record of delivering large, cross-functional projects on aggressive timelines, with good judgment about what to cut • Zero-to-one experience: building a new product or major surface from scratch, ideally at a startup, a mid-size company, or a product-led team inside a larger one • Experience with AI/LLM-powered products, agents, or evaluation systems • Experience with self-serve or product-led growth products (free-to-paid, usage-based limits) is a plus
Responsibilities
• Lead and grow a new engineering team, including senior, staff, and principal engineers, through hiring, coaching, and career development • Own the end-to-end product: sign-up and onboarding, agent-driven search and calibration, shortlists, analytics, and tiering • Shape the architecture early. Review technical designs and proposals and set direction • Drive execution on an ambitious timeline across a large project, and make clear trade-offs with product and design on scope versus speed • Partner closely with product and design, and with the teams behind outreach, candidate data, and AI/ML search and retrieval • Establish the team’s engineering culture, processes, and operating rhythm from the ground up
Benefits
• $260K – $290K • Offers Equity • For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all U.S.-based roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including geographic location as well as candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above. • 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. • 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 • Location: San Francisco, CA — 5 days/week in-office • We’re looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a high-impact engineering team within Handshake Careers. You’ll own the engineering of a new, agent-first product for industry recruiting: the future of how companies find, evaluate, and reach experienced talent. • Recruiting teams work through hours of manual searching, filtering, and outreach. Our product replaces that with an agent. A recruiter describes who they need, or uploads a job description, and the agent builds an ideal candidate profile, finds matches, refines results from feedback, and drafts and sends personalized outreach. • You’ll lead the founding team, a mix of senior, staff, principal, and mid-level engineers. The product is self-serve from day one, starting free and growing into paid and enterprise tiers. • 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 • Ownership: • Financial Wellness: • Family Support: • Wellbeing: • Growth: • Remote & Office: • Time Off: • Connection: • Explore our mission, values, and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.
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