Manager, R&D Strategy & Operations

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San Francisco (CA)

On-site

USD 160,000 - 230,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Equity in fast-growing company

401(k) match + financial coaching

Parental leave & fertility benefits

Medical, dental, vision; mental health

Learning stipend & career development

Remote & Office: SF office perks

Flexible PTO + holidays

Team outings & referral bonuses

Job summary

Handshake is seeking a Strategy & Operations Manager for R&D to extend Handshake AI capabilities. You will work at the intersection of scalable reinforcement learning environments, quality frameworks for frontier models, and large-scale coding initiatives driving real-world AI applications.

This role is a force multiplier, rotating across business units to maximize impact, build self-sustaining operating systems, and advance corporate AI capabilities with a strategic, hands-on approach.

Qualifications

6–8+ years in strategy & operations, chief of staff, or a hybrid role in a fast-moving R&D driven environment.
Proven track record deploying across multi-team organizations and building durable operating systems.
Ability to move between a technical AI research setting and consumer marketplace without loss of effectiveness.
High judgment under ambiguity with the ability to push back when risks arise.

Responsibilities

Deploy to highest-priority initiatives across R&D and establish sprint operating structures.
Build trusted relationships with engineering and product leads and influence decisions.
Identify friction and own playbooks, including automating workflows.
Run org-wide rhythms: quarterly planning, execution, communications, and cross-team reporting.
Escalate to the S&O lead with context, POV, and a plan.

Skills

Strategy & Ops

CoS experience

R&D environment

Executive presence

AI fluency

Relationship-building

Job description

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

The Strategy & Operations Manager for R&D will extend Handshake's S&O function into the frontier of AI development. Primarily deployed in Handshake AI (HAI), this person works at the intersection of the most consequential and fast-moving work in the company: scalable reinforcement learning environments, systematic quality frameworks for training frontier models, and large-scale coding projects pushing the boundaries of what AI can do on a massive, real-world problem set.

This is not a program management role and it's not a permanent execution owner. It's a force multiplier: someone who deploys to wherever the business problem is most urgent, builds the operating system to make it self-sustaining, and moves on. They work alongside the R&D S&O leader to extend strategic reach across two business units with different operational needs and up level how teams across R&D operate with AI in their toolkit.

Your Role

Deploy to the highest-priority initiatives across R&D, build the operating structure for each sprint, and hand off when it's self-sustaining
Build trusted relationships with engineering and product leads; be informed enough to push back and credible enough to be heard
Identify process and tooling friction across R&D and own the playbooks to fix it, including agentification of manual workflows
Run org-wide operating rhythms, including quarterly planning, execution rhythms, org comms, and cross-team reporting
Escalate to the S&O lead with context and a point of view, and a plan

Desired Capabilities

6–8+ years in strategy & operations, chief of staff, or a hybrid role in a fast-moving R&D driven environment
Proven track record deploying across complex, multi-team organizations and building operating systems that outlast their involvement
Strategic range to move fluidly between a technical AI research environment and a consumer marketplace without losing effectiveness
High judgment under ambiguity: goes to where the problem is, not where the job description points
Executive presence to operate alongside senior leaders and push back when something is at risk
AI-fluent operator who uses the latest tools and is excited to build the agentification playbook for others
Relationship-builder who earns trust quickly across engineering, product, and design stakeholders

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.