Forward Deployed Engineer

About Handshake

Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50), and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.

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

• Work hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions

• Join a team with leadership from Scale AI, Meta, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, among others

• Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue

About the Role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll work directly with our customers, leading AI labs to understand their most pressing technical challenges, then design and deploy solutions that directly impact their workflows and model performance. You’ll work across the stack, ship quickly, and iterate based on real-world feedback, often in highly ambiguous and fast-changing environments. Your work will deliver real-world impact for our customers.

This is a unique opportunity to combine deep engineering work with direct customer engagement—shaping not just the “what” but the “how” of our most important deployments.

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

• Work at the intersection of partner AI labs and our engineering and operations teams to identify needs, gather requirements, and design effective solutions.

• Work with custom asks from customers to rapidly design, prototype, and deploy tailored solutions that address unique and high-impact challenges.

• Devise solutions to complex technical challenges and take ownership of delivery from concept through deployment.

• Rapidly prototype, test, and iterate on tools in response to real-time feedback.

• Contribute to architectural decisions and establish best practices for reliability, scalability, and security in high-impact deployments.

• Document solutions and create technical playbooks for repeatable, scalable deployment processes.

Desired Capabilities

• 2–4 years of professional software engineering experience, ideally in a role involving direct customer interaction or solution deployment.

• Proficiency with ReactJS and TypeScript, with an eye for detail, usability, and accessibility.

• Solid understanding of relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL) and data modeling.

• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP) and deployment pipelines.

• Passion for clean, maintainable code and building reliable, performant systems.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment with a focus on continuous learning and improvement

Extra Credit

• Experience delivering production systems for LLMs or other AI-powered products in real-world environments.

• Familiarity with component libraries, design systems, and building reusable, maintainable interfaces for rapid deployment.

• Exposure to performance optimization and scaling of frontend or full-stack applications under real-world constraints.

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.