Software Engineer I, Quality

Handshake; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in fast-growing company

Paid parental leave

Medical, dental & vision

Mental health support

Wellness stipend

Free lunch/gym in SF office

Flexible PTO

12 holidays + 2 flex days

Job summary

Handshake is hiring a Software Engineer for the Quality team in San Francisco, CA. You will build backend systems that evaluate and improve the quality of data delivered to frontier AI labs, with real-time checks and scalable pipelines.

You will collaborate across engineers, researchers, product teams, and operators to turn ambiguous quality problems into reliable, scalable solutions, using APIs and internal tools to reach internal customers and partners.

Qualifications

• >2+ years of experience building and maintaining backend applications, services, or data-intensive systems.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale backend systems that evaluate and improve data quality for frontier AI labs.
• Develop infrastructure for real-time quality checks before final customer delivery.
• Design recommendation systems to select effective quality checks.
• Create data pipelines and metrics to observe ambiguous quality signals.
• Expose Quality capabilities via APIs and internal tools.
• Collaborate with engineers, researchers, product teams and operators to solve scalable quality problems.
• Improve reliability, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of workflows as the business grows.

Skills

Backend systems

API design

Distributed systems

System design

Testing & debugging

Data pipelines

Collaboration

ML/AI familiarity

Job description

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all U.S.-based roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including geographic location as well as candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

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

We’re hiring a Software Engineer to join our Quality team. The team builds the systems that define, select, and enforce quality standards across the data and evaluations we deliver to leading AI labs.

You’ll work on infrastructure that evaluates complex outputs submitted by fellows, such as coding tasks designed to challenge advanced AI models. These quality checks run throughout the production process: providing real-time feedback to fellows, supporting internal operators, and validating outputs before they reach customers.

Location: San Francisco, CA. This is an in-office role five days per week.

What You’ll Do

Build and scale backend systems that evaluate and improve the quality of data delivered to frontier AI labs

Develop infrastructure for running quality checks in real time and before final customer delivery

Help design recommendation systems that select the most effective quality checks for each project

Build data pipelines and measurement systems that make complex, subjective quality signals more observable and actionable

Develop APIs and platform capabilities that allow other teams and tools to use the Quality platform

Help surface Quality capabilities through MCP and other AI-native interfaces used by internal operators

Partner with engineers, researchers, product teams, and operations stakeholders to turn ambiguous quality problems into scalable technical solutions

Improve the reliability, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of quality workflows as the business grows

Desired Capabilities

2+ years of experience building and maintaining backend applications, services, or data-intensive systems

Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, testing, debugging, and operational reliability

A data-oriented approach to solving problems and measuring whether a system is working

Experience working with APIs, databases, data pipelines, or distributed systems

The ability to navigate ambiguous problems, break them into manageable pieces, and deliver iteratively

Strong communication and collaboration skills across technical and non-technical teams

A quality-focused mindset and an interest in building systems that make difficult-to-measure outcomes more rigorous

Experience with machine learning, applied AI, or AI-enabled products

Familiarity with model evaluation, experimentation, recommendation systems, or ranking systems

Experience with annotation, data-labeling, tasking, or workflow-orchestration platforms

Experience building developer platforms, internal tools, or extensible APIs

Familiarity with MCP, agentic systems, or AI-native development tools

Experience working in a fast-moving startup or similarly ambiguous environment

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

Family Support: Paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching

Wellbeing: Medical, dental, and vision, mental health support, wellness stipend

Remote & Office: Internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office

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