Staff Machine Learning Engineer

AI Chopping Block; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Ownership: Equity

401(k) match

Parental leave

Wellbeing benefits

Learning stipend

Remote & Office: SF office perks

Job summary

Handshake is hiring a Staff Machine Learning Engineer for the Network and Handshake AI Marketplace Relevance team. You will set technical direction for core embedding models, recommender systems, and personalized notifications, building an ML infrastructure that scales this product line.

You'll lead architecture, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and mentor engineers while shaping responsible AI practices and explainability at scale.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in ML or data science with production systems.
• Strong Python and ML framework skills (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Experience in recommendations, NLP, DL, or explainable AI.
• Knowledge of ML lifecycle: experiments, monitoring, pipelines.
• Ability to architect and scale ML infrastructure for embeddings and ranking.
• Solid ML concepts with good judgment on application.
• Experience setting direction and mentoring engineers.
• Track record of business impact from ML at scale.
• Experience with Generative Retrieval and LLM post-training is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical strategy for ML models and infrastructure across search, recommendations, and notifications.
• Set standards for model development, experimentation, and production deployment; mentor engineers.
• Partner with product and data science to translate problems into a clear roadmap.
• Hands-on work to build and ship high-leverage models; unblock hard technical problems.
• Own the roadmap for retrieval models and embeddings across the platform.

Skills

8+ years ML

ML leadership

Python

ML frameworks

Recommender systems

NLP / LLMs

ML lifecycle

Embeddings / retrieval

Technical leadership

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 alongside 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

Handshake is hiring a Staff Machine Learning Engineer for the Network and Handshake AI Marketplace Relevance team. AI is transforming how students navigate their careers, and we're committed to providing innovative, responsible AI-powered solutions that guide students from educational aspirations to meaningful career opportunities.

In this role, you will set the technical direction for the systems that power core embedding models, consumer job search & recommendations, user understanding, and personalized notifications across the Handshake platform. You'll operate as a force multiplier - architecting the ML infrastructure that the broader Relevance org builds on, and raising the technical bar for how the team ships models into production.

You’ll own the roadmap for a suite of systems built on multiple retrieval models - Graph Neural Network, bi-encoders, semantic cross-encoders with multi-stage rankers, running on a data platform with billions of data points. In addition, the team is investing into areas of generative retrieval and post-training. Your work will directly move the marketplace's core metrics, and you'll be a key voice in how Handshake approaches explainability, fairness, and quality as we scale responsible AI across the product.

What You'll Do

Architect: Define the technical strategy and system design for ML models and infrastructure spanning search and recommendation, notifications, generative retrieval, and core embeddings - making build-vs-buy, architecture, and platform decisions with company-wide impact.

Force Multiplier: Set technical standards and best practices for model development, experimentation, and production deployment; mentor and elevate engineers and data scientists across the team.

Cross-functional Leader: Partner with engineering leadership, product, and data science to translate ambiguous business problems into a clear technical roadmap, and drive alignment across stakeholders on priorities and tradeoffs.

Operator: Get hands-on where it matters most - building and shipping the highest-leverage models and systems yourself, and unblocking the team on the hardest technical problems.

Desired Capabilities

• 8+ years of experience in machine learning, data science, or a related field, with a track record of owning large-scale, production ML systems end-to-end

• Deep expertise in Python and ML frameworks such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, or TensorFlow

• Experience in recommendations, personalization, NLP, deep learning, LLMs, or explainable AI

• Deep familiarity with the ML lifecycle (experiment tracking, model monitoring, feature pipelines) at scale

• Demonstrated ability to architect and scale ML infrastructure - embedding-based retrieval, ranking systems, GNNs, or similar - in a high-traffic cloud based production environment

• Strong foundation in core ML concepts (classification, regression, ranking, model evaluation) with the judgment to know when and how to apply them

• Experience setting technical direction across teams and mentoring senior and mid-level engineers

• Track record of driving measurable business impact through ML systems at scale

• Experience with Generative Retrieval and LLM Post Training recipes is a plus.

Extra Credit

• A track record as a clear, persuasive communicator who can align technical and non-technical stakeholders around a shared roadmap

• Experience building or scaling a team's technical practices and standards from the ground up

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

• 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.