Senior Manager, Engineering

Handshake; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

401(k) match

Parental leave

Wellness stipend

Learning stipend

Free lunch/gym in SF office

Remote & Office flexibility

Job summary

Handshake is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a high-impact team building a new agent-first product for industry recruiting. You’ll own the engineering of the product from signup to outreach, and guide architecture and delivery decisions.

You’ll manage a mix of senior, staff, and principal engineers, hiring and shaping an engineering culture that collaborates with product and design to ship on ambitious timelines.

Qualifications

• 3+ years experience managing engineering teams, including senior staff.
• Strong people management with high EQ and empathy.
• Deep technical background and ability to contribute to architecture.
• Track record delivering large, cross-functional projects on aggressive timelines.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a new engineering team, including senior, staff, and principal engineers.
• Own the end-to-end product: sign-up, onboarding, agent-driven search, and analytics.
• Shape the architecture early and review designs.
• Drive execution on an ambitious timeline across a large project.
• Partner with product and design, and with outreach and AI/ML teams.
• Establish the team’s engineering culture, processes, and operating rhythm.

Skills

Team management

Architectural judgment

Cross-functional collaboration

People development

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

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

About the Role

We’re looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a high-impact engineering team within Handshake Careers. You’ll own the engineering of a new, agent-first product for industry recruiting: the future of how companies find, evaluate, and reach experienced talent.

Recruiting teams work through hours of manual searching, filtering, and outreach. Our product replaces that with an agent. A recruiter describes who they need, or uploads a job description, and the agent builds an ideal candidate profile, finds matches, refines results from feedback, and drafts and sends personalized outreach.

You’ll lead the founding team, a mix of senior, staff, principal, and mid-level engineers. The product is self‑serve from day one, starting free and growing into paid and enterprise tiers.

What you’ll do

• Lead and grow a new engineering team, including senior, staff, and principal engineers, through hiring, coaching, and career development


• Own the end‑to‑end product: sign‑up and onboarding, agent‑driven search and calibration, shortlists, analytics, and tiering


• Shape the architecture early. Review technical designs and proposals and set direction


• Drive execution on an ambitious timeline across a large project, and make clear trade‑offs with product and design on scope versus speed


• Partner closely with product and design, and with the teams behind outreach, candidate data, and AI/ML search and retrieval


• Establish the team’s engineering culture, processes, and operating rhythm from the ground up

What we’re looking for

• 3+ years experience managing engineering teams, including teams that include senior and staff engineers


• Strong people management: high EQ, empathy, and a record of growing engineers’ careers


• Deep technical background. You can contribute to architecture and evaluate trade‑offs on a new system, even if you no longer code day to day


• A track record of delivering large, cross‑functional projects on aggressive timelines, with good judgment about what to cut

Bonus

• Zero-to‑one experience: building a new product or major surface from scratch, ideally at a startup, a mid‑size company, or a product‑led team inside a larger one


• Experience with AI/LLM‑powered products, agents, or evaluation systems


• Experience with self‑serve or product‑led growth products (free‑to‑paid, usage‑based limits) is a plus

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, wellness stipend


• Growth: 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.