Staff Software Engineer

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Your Impact

Handshake is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to be based in our Berlin office to shape the future of career discovery for Generation Z. Over the years, Handshake has become a trusted platform for millions of students seeking jobs, connecting with communities, and showcasing their professional identities. While we've built a fantastic and highly-rated experience, there's still so much more we can achieve—and that’s where you come in.

Your Role

• Act as a technical leader across multiple cross-functional product squads focused on Handshake’s marketplace in Europe and across the globe.
• Translate business strategy into technical direction by collaborating closely with Product, Design, Data, and Go-To-Market partners.
• Establish engineering best practices for quality, reliability, and scalability across the org.
• Mentor engineers and help shape a culture of technical rigor, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Navigate ambiguity, assess tradeoffs, and make pragmatic decisions that balance long-term scalability with immediate impact.

Your Experience

• Significant experience with any systems programming language and/or backend web frameworks. We use Ruby-on-Rails so past experience is a plus but not required.
• Strong product sensibility—you care deeply about user experience and business impact, not just the underlying technology.
• Full-stack fluency and demonstrated success collaborating with partners in product, design, and analytics to define, build, and ship great products and experiences.
• Experienced in driving successful architectural decisions across backend and frontend systems with confidence.
• Knowledge of observability systems and practices and can use them to avoid or quickly resolve incidents.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work well within and across teams at Handshake.

Technologies You'll Work With

• Ruby on Rails
• React, TypeScript, Webpack, Redux
• Kubernetes, GCP, PostgreSQL, Redis, ElasticSearch

Seniority level

• Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Full-time

Job function

• Engineering and Information Technology

Industries

• Software Development

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