Strategic Projects Lead, Handshake
Coding
$136-190k
Offers Equity & Bonus
The career platform for Gen Z
Be an early applicant
The career platform for Gen Z
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$136-190k
Offers Equity & Bonus
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 experience in technical or analytical roles such as software engineering, data, analytics, or technical product. We are also open to people who come out of non technical jobs that have a coding background or degree
- A technical degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or similar and/or hands-on experience with coding (Python, SQL, or similar)
- Strong coding skills (Python, TypeScript/Node, Java or equivalent) and practical experience with unit tests, CI, version control, and basic infra
- Strong analytical and data driven problem solver, with a first principles approach to scaling and operational challenges
- Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, able to work closely with technical teams and customers while juggling multiple high priority projects
- Entrepreneurial, high ownership mindset, with a high degree of agency, comfort with ambiguity, and pride in end to end outcomes
- Fast learner with deep curiosity about AI, able to quickly pick up complex and technical concepts and stay up to date on LLMs and AI trends
- You don’t need to be a full-time engineer in this role, but you should be technical enough to reason deeply about systems, data quality, and tradeoffs, and to earn credibility with technical stakeholders
What the job involves
- As the Strategic Projects Lead you’ll run multi-week to multi-month coding data initiatives for leading AI and platform teams
- You’ll coordinate hundreds to thousands of highly skilled SWE Fellows, design and own technical evaluation and annotation workflows, and be accountable for delivery, margins, quality and customer relationships
- You’ll write and validate coding assessments, build rubric-driven code review processes, instrument quality signals, and quickly adapt workflows when systems and people need to flex to meet deadlines
- This role bridges ML/product/engineering and operations — hands-on with code, fluent with metrics, and ruthless about data quality. What you'll do:
- Multi-million ARR-equivalent program scope and delivery metrics
- End-to-end delivery of coding-data programs: scoping → assessment design → Fellow selection → annotation → QA → customer feedback
- Design and run technical screens (take-homes, unit-test driven tasks, live coding) that populate the SWE Talent Bench
- Create rubrics, audit processes and tooling to ensure code annotations/model labels meet production quality
- Create scripts/infrastructure (Python/TypeScript/SQL) to automate QA, analytics and reporting
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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