Location

San Francisco, CA

Employment Type

Full time

Department

Engineering

Compensation

• $205K – $300K

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 a Senior Platform Engineer at Handshake AI Enterprise, you'll own the infrastructure layer that makes everything else possible. Enterprise customers don't want their data in shared infrastructure — they want AI applications deployed inside their own environments, on their terms. You'll be the engineer who makes that happen, reliably and at speed.

You'll design and execute deployment patterns across VPC, on-prem, and self-hosted configurations, work directly with customer IT and security teams, and build the tooling that makes each new deployment faster than the last. Without you, nothing ships.

This is a founding-team level role with real technical complexity and direct customer impact — building the platform that Handshake AI Enterprise runs on.

• Own the infrastructure and deployment layer for AI applications shipped into enterprise customer environments
• Design and execute VPC, on-prem, and self-hosted deployment patterns across varying enterprise security requirements
• Work directly with customer IT and security teams to navigate compliance, data residency, and access control constraints
• Build tooling and automation that makes deployments repeatable and reliable across customers
• Collaborate closely with Product and Applied AI engineers on your deployment team
• Identify systemic gaps in infrastructure or process and lead initiatives to address them, reducing friction for future deployments
• Define the platform playbook for Handshake AI Enterprise as we scale to more customers and more complex environments

Desired Capabilities

• 5–6+ years of backend and infrastructure engineering experience
• Hands-on experience deploying applications into enterprise environments — VPC deployments, on-prem, and self-hosted configurations
• Deep understanding of enterprise security requirements: data segregation, access controls, compliance frameworks
• Experience working directly with external customers in a deployment or field engineering context
• Strong operational mindset — you care about reliability, observability, and repeatability at scale
• Comfort in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where the requirements are defined as you go

Extra Credit

• Experience at an infrastructure company that offers self-hosted or on-prem deployment options
• Familiarity with authentication, secrets management, and zero-trust networking
• Experience building internal deployment tooling or platform abstractions that improved team velocity
• Background working alongside applied AI or ML systems in production environments

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

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.