Strategic Projects Lead, Safety — AI Policy & Data Programs

Handshake; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

401(k) match

Parental leave

Wellbeing stipend

Learning stipend

Mental health support

Team outings

Job summary

Handshake is seeking a Strategic Projects Lead (SPL), Safety, to own large-scale human data programs powering frontier AI model training and evaluation. You will design, build, and execute workflows for model policy annotation, informing training, evaluation, and enforcement decisions across leading AI systems.

In this high-ownership role, you will work with top AI labs and industry partners to drive scope, resolve issues, and mature safety policies while maintaining accountability for results

Qualifications

• 2+ years in trust and safety, policy enforcement, regulatory compliance, risk management, or related field.
• Strong analytical and first-principles problem-solving skills applied to scaling operations; proficiency in SQL (or similar) to draw insights from large data sets.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, including with senior customers.
• High ownership mindset with pride in end-to-end accountability.
• Curiosity and ability to quickly learn technical AI concepts and industry trends.

Responsibilities

• Design and architect annotation frameworks and labeling workflows that scale effectively while maintaining high precision, accuracy, and inter-rater agreement.
• Lead, mentor, and manage a team of trusted annotators, fostering a culture of precision, consistency, and care given the sensitive nature of the work while addressing complex edge cases, and identify policy inconsistencies.
• Collaborate with policy leads to offer organized insights regarding gaps, classification ambiguities, and nuanced scenarios derived from practical data annotation.
• Construct and iterate on detailed annotation playbooks and auditor resources to drive precision and alignment across diverse datasets and regulatory domains.
• Detect and surface novel data trends, systemic labeling errors, and strategic opportunities to harden and mature internal safety policies.
• Partner directly with frontier AI labs and senior stakeholders to shape scope, resolve issues, and expand model policy programs through execution.

Skills

Trust and safety

SQL

Stakeholder management

Ownership mindset

AI concepts

Job description

Handshake is seeking a Strategic Projects Lead (SPL), Safety, to own large-scale human data programs powering frontier AI model training and evaluation. You will design, build, and execute workflows for model policy annotation, informing training, evaluation, and enforcement decisions across leading AI systems.

In this high-ownership role, you will work with top AI labs and industry partners to drive scope, resolve issues, and mature safety policies while maintaining accountability for results