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.

About Handshake

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

As an Applied AI Engineer at Handshake AI Enterprise, you'll be part of a small, expert team embedded directly inside enterprise customer environments. You'll develop a deep understanding of each customer's business, their workflows, their bottlenecks, where the real leverage is, and help translate that understanding into production-grade AI agents that measurably change how they operate.

This isn't an implementation or consulting role. You'll own meaningful parts of the full stack: building and deploying agents, running evals, and iterating until performance actually moves. You'll be supported by senior teammates but expected to bring real craft and ownership to everything you touch.

If you've built AI that works in the real world and want to do it at higher stakes, with better data, closer lab relationships, and a founding team that moves fast, this is the role.

• Location: San Francisco, CA | 5 days/week in-office

What You'll Do

• Contribute to customer deployments as part of a small team, developing genuine understanding of their business and workflows

• Build and deploy production-grade agents tailored to specific customer use cases

• Design and run evals to measure agent performance; iterate and hill-climb until results move

• Work closely with Senior Engineers, Product, and Platform teammates to ship cohesive, reliable solutions

• Contribute to engineering best practices, agent patterns, and reusable frameworks as the team scales

• Surface insights from deployments that inform Handshake's platform and product roadmap

What We're Looking For

• 2-5 years of engineering experience, with backend depth and some exposure to AI or ML systems in production

• Hands-on experience building and shipping software in production, you care about whether it actually works

• Familiarity with agent architectures or LLM-based systems, and curiosity to go deeper

• Comfort with ambiguity, you don't need a perfect spec to start making progress

• Strong communication skills, you'll interact with customers regularly and need to represent the team well

• High ownership mentality, you care about outcomes, not just closing tickets

Extra Credit

• Any experience building or shipping AI applications in production

• Exposure to enterprise environments or customer-facing engineering roles

• Familiarity with evals, prompt engineering, or AI quality measurement

• Domain knowledge in a specific enterprise vertical (recruiting, finance, ops, legal, etc.)

Perks

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, $500 wellness stipend

📚 Growth: $2,000 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.

Compensation Range: $157K - $175K