Software Engineer, Handshake
Fellow Experience
$145-170k
Offers Equity
The career platform for Gen Z
Be an early applicant
The career platform for Gen Z
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$145-170k
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
- 2+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Experience building full-stack applications, with comfort working across frontend and backend
- Strong proficiency in TypeScript
- Experience with modern web stacks (Next.js, tRPC, GraphQL, PostgreSQL)
- Familiarity with asynchronous workflows or background job systems
- Product-oriented mindset with a focus on user experience and business outcomes
- Strong communication skills and comfort collaborating cross-functionally
- Growth mindset and eagerness to take on increasing responsibility
Desirable
- Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Temporal
- Exposure to matching systems, marketplaces, or multi-step onboarding flows
- Background at high-growth or scaling technology companies
- Interest in AI-driven products, human-in-the-loop systems, or data platforms
What the job involves
- As a Software Engineer on the Fellow Experience team, you will build and scale full-stack systems that power the middle-of-funnel experience for fellows, from project discovery through successful onboarding
- You’ll work across frontend and backend surfaces to improve how fellows discover projects, apply, get matched, and onboard successfully
- Your work will directly impact fellow volume, match quality, and conversion as we scale toward more intelligent automatic allocations
- This is a product-focused, full-stack role with real customer impact, close collaboration with product and design, and clear growth paths toward senior technical ownership
- The Fellow Experience team owns critical user journeys including the landing page experience for project invitations and applications, onboarding flows (confidentiality agreements, video/camera checks, educational programs, reading materials), project-specific assessments and recordings, and the internal tools that support manual matching
- Build and iterate on full-stack features that support fellow matching, onboarding, and readiness for project work
- Contribute to the evolution of our automatic allocations system by implementing matching logic, workflows, and product improvements with guidance from senior engineers
- Design and ship backend APIs, asynchronous workflows, and frontend user experiences that are reliable, scalable, and intuitive
- Partner closely with product managers and designers to deliver polished, end-to-end user experiences
- Write high-quality, maintainable code while balancing speed and correctness
- Debug and resolve issues related to onboarding flows, matching outcomes, and system reliability
- Participate in code reviews and contribute to improving engineering standards and best practices
- Grow toward increased technical ownership by learning from senior engineers on the team
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.
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