Software Engineer I, Quality

Apply; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in fast-growing company

401(k) match

Parental leave and fertility benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Wellbeing stipend and mental health

Job summary

Handshake is hiring a Software Engineer to join the Quality team in our San Francisco, CA office. You will help build and scale backend systems that assess data quality for frontier AI labs, while developing real-time quality checks and robust data pipelines.

You will design recommendations for quality checks, build cross-team APIs, and collaborate with engineers, researchers, product, and operations to solve complex quality problems.

Qualifications

• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

Backend systems

API design

Distributed systems

Data pipelines

Quality assurance

System design

Testing

Operational reliability

Tools

PostgreSQL

Redis

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

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

Extra Credit

• 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

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.