Member of Technical Staff, Coding Agents

Apply; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity ownership

401(k) match

Parental leave

Wellbeing stipend

Learning stipend

SF office access

Flexible PTO

Team outings

Job summary

Handshake is hiring a Member of Technical Staff to define how frontier coding agents are benchmarked and improved. You will work with world‑class AI researchers and engineers to develop benchmarks, verifier systems, and data-quality techniques for AI coding applications.

Early team members shape technical direction, open-source projects, and research products while operating with high ownership and a builder's mindset.

Qualifications

• Experience building AI benchmarks and evaluating frontier models.
• Publication or strong track record in AI for software/code generation is a plus.
• Demonstrated software engineering ability and OSS contributions.

Responsibilities

• Create/publish Coding benchmarks that challenge frontier agents.
• Study and publish findings on the frontier of coding agents.
• Support labs in improving models for coding.
• Contribute to open-source benchmarks, tools, and research.

Skills

Coding benchmarks

Agent harnesses

Open-source contributions

Research publication

Tools

GitHub

Benchmarks tooling

Job description

About Handshake

Handshake's mission is to organize expert human knowledge to advance the AI economy. Handshake AI works directly with frontier labs on their most consequential data, evaluation, and post-training challenges, building the systems that turn expert human knowledge into the data and evaluations that make frontier models better.

You will work alongside engineers, researchers, operators, and builders from organizations including Scale AI, Meta, Google, Amazon, xAI, Notion, and Palantir—and help build the systems that make expert human knowledge useful for advancing AI.

The Role

We are hiring a Member of Technical Staff to help define how frontier coding agents are benchmarked and improved. This is a broad, high-ownership role for researchers who build.

You will partner with the world’s top AI researchers and thousands of software engineers to develop new benchmarks, reward and verifier systems, agent-evaluation methodologies, and data-quality techniques, centered around applications of AI for Coding. You will work on questions at the center of frontier AI progress: what should be measured, how to design evaluations that reflect real capability, how to create high-signal feedback, and how to build the environments and data systems that make those answers actionable.

Early members of the team will have unusual influence over our technical direction, operating culture, and the open-source software, benchmarks, and research products we build. We care more about demonstrated research capability, technical judgment, and a builder's mindset than a specific title, degree, or career path.

Location: San Francisco preferred; we are open to exceptional candidates in other locations.

What you'll do

• Create/publish Coding benchmarks that challenge state-of-the-art frontier agents.

• Understand/shape the frontier of coding agents and where the space is headed, publishing studies of interesting/impactful findings.

• Help the world’s top AI Labs improve their models for coding.

• Publicly contribute to the field through benchmarks, open-source tools, research, and technical writing.

What we're looking for

• You’re extremely passionate about building software with agents, and regularly tinkering with the latest coding agents.

• Comfort operating in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment with substantial ownership.

• At least one of the following:

  • Previous experience working on a Coding benchmark.

  • Published research on AI for Software / Code-Generation at NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, COLM, etc.

  • Extensive software engineering experience or strong GitHub profile of OSS contributions, along with deep knowledge of agent harnesses.

Why join

• Work at the very frontier of AI with most major AI labs, researching some of the most important problems in Data and Evaluations.

• Publish results and work in public through open-source benchmarks and software, papers, and blogs.

• Join a rapidly growing company whose data business grew from zero to nearly $1B run rate in a year.

• Help build an early technical organization where your work shapes the roadmap, standards, and culture.

• Attend (and publish at) conferences like NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, COLM.

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

Office: Commuting support, free lunch, and gym in our SF office

Time Off: Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days

Connection: Team outings & referral bonuses