Technical Program Manager, Handshake
Research
$200-250k
Offers equity
The career platform for Gen Z
Be an early applicant
The career platform for Gen Z
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$200-250k
Offers equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To democratize access to opportunity and ensure any student can build a great career no matter who they know, where they live or what school they attend.
Role
Who you are
- This role is ideal for someone who thrives at the intersection of research ambition and operational reality — someone who can bring structure to ambiguity, manage complex cross-functional dependencies, and scale technically rigorous work into repeatable systems
- Experience as a Technical Program Manager, Program Manager, or equivalent, owning complex cross-functional initiatives
- Strong technical foundation in machine learning systems, particularly LLMs, post-training workflows, and evaluation frameworks
- Experience working closely with researchers and engineers, translating research goals into executable programs
- Familiarity with data annotation, data quality, or evaluation pipelines in ML systems
- Proven ability to manage ambiguity, align stakeholders, and deliver in fast-moving environments
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical work to diverse audiences
- Systems thinker with a bias toward execution, scalability, and operational rigor
- Comfort partnering with external organizations (AI labs, academic institutions, or industry partners)
What the job involves
- As Technical Program Manager, Handshake AI Research, you will own the execution backbone of HART’s research initiatives
- You will translate research goals and partner requirements into well-structured technical programs, ensuring delivery across Research, Engineering, and Operations
- You will act as the Directly Responsible Individual for research programs, ensuring alignment, execution quality, and on-time delivery for initiatives spanning data quality, evaluation frameworks, and post-training workflows
- Own end-to-end program execution for Handshake AI Research initiatives, from early scoping through pilot, scale, and steady-state operations
- Translate research objectives and partner needs into clear technical requirements, milestones, and delivery plans
- Serve as the primary execution lead bridging Research, Engineering, Operations, and external AI lab partners
- Drive programs across HART’s core pillars:
- Data Quality & Validation
- Evaluation & Benchmarking
- Post-training data workflows (RLHF / RLAIF / domain-expert labeling)
- Manage timelines, risks, dependencies, and resourcing across multiple concurrent research programs
- Partner with engineering to ensure tooling and infrastructure support scalable research execution
- Collaborate with operations, quality, and analytics teams to design repeatable, high-quality research pipelines
- Track success metrics aligned with research OKRs, partner commitments, and evaluation outcomes
- Identify bottlenecks, propose system-level improvements, and drive continuous process optimization
- Communicate program status, tradeoffs, and outcomes clearly to internal leadership and external stakeholders
Our take
The three founders of Handshake established their company in an attempt to eliminate inequality and make the student hiring landscape fairer. The Handshake platform acts as a LinkedIn for college students, pairing students from every walk of life with more than 650K employers, including the entire Fortune 500, which includes Google and Nike.
The graduate recruitment platform is open to any student with a valid @.edu email address, with more than 17M active users from thousands of colleges and universities. With a student-first philosophy, the company generates revenue from both universities and employers rather than students.
Valued at $3.5B, Handshake has gained traction in a competitive market, although it has strong competition from recruiting giants LinkedIn and Indeed. It stands out, however, by helping students build new relationships and skills, rather than simply making connections to people they already know.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
2% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Jan 2022
$200m
SERIES F
May 2021
$80m
SERIES E
Total funding: $434m
Company benefits
- Health Insurance: Comprehensive medical , dental, and vision coverage
- Fertility and family forming: Through a partnership, Handshake offers comprehensive family benefits, including infertility treatments and a $15K stipend, to its employees.
- LGTBQ+ coverage: All medical plans cover transgender services.
- Mental health: Discounts on a variety of wellness apps and an Employee Assistance Program with access to five free counseling sessions.
- Tax savings: Tax-advantaged benefits to save money on healthcare, dependent care, and other expenses.
- Learning & development: Employees are provided with an annual stipend to use towards professional development, career development workshops, manager trainings, and 1-on-1 coaching through external partnerships
- Community leader support: Employee Resource Group leaders are compensated with a quarterly bonus for the high-impact work the role requires
- Parental leave: Leaves of 16 weeks for birth-giving parents and 10 weeks for non-birth-giving parents; the policy applies to adoptions as well. Handshake also partners to provide one-on-one coaching on preparing for leave and coming back from leave
- Flexible time off: No accrued time off or waiting period to take vacation. Two paid flexible holiday days off to observe holidays that closely align with religious, cultural, and personal needs
- Sabbatical: Paid six-week sabbatical to recharge and reset beginning at six years of continuous, full-time employment, and every four years thereafter
- Volunteer time off: Two days off for social and civil activism, volunteer work, and/or any related activities, including attending and participating in protests
- Life & disability insurance: Essential benefits and automatic coverage with basic life insurance, plus short-term and long-term disability coverage.
- 401k match: Dollar-for-dollar match up to 1% of pay, with a max of $1,200 per year.
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Garrett Lord
(Co-Founder & CEO)Majored in Computer Science at Michigan Technological University. Interned at Palantir Technologies before co-founding Handshake in 2012.
Ben Christensen
(Co-Founder)Graduated from Michigan Technological University with a degree in Computer Networking & Systems Administration. Interned at Target and worked as a Developer at Up and Running Software. Was part of Arbor Networks' ASERT Security Research team.
Scott Ringwelski
(Co-Founder)Attained a degree in Computer Software Engineering from Michigan Technological University. Co-founded Handshake in 2012.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 24 more jobs at Handshake